War-games campaign blanketed Central Oregon
Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, shipped to the Beaver State for training (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408d.oregon-maneuver-ww2.html)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast
The Offbeat Oregon History Podcast is a daily service from the Offbeat Oregon History newspaper column. Each weekday morning, a strange-but-true story from Oregon's history from the archives of the column is uploaded. An exploding whale, a few shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. Source citations are included with the text version on the Web site at https://offbeatoregon.com.
Episodes
Camp Adair hardened recruits with combat training — and poison oak (Part 2 of 2)
Built in six months, the bustling metropolis of 40,000 lasted just six years before being turned, by order of the U.S. Government, into a ghost town and cut up for salvage. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoreg…
Oregon's second-largest city was built in six months (Part 1 of 2)
BY EARLY 1941, the U.S. Army knew it was about to get sucked into at least one of the wars that were already raging around the world. The Selective Service and Training Act had passed the previous fall, and already young…
Before news “crusade,” milk was killing babies
State regulators didn't care, so neither did some dairy farmers, who left dead cows to rot among their dairy herds and brought milk to market in the same cans they used to slop the hogs; Portland led the nation in baby d…
Quest for lost gold mine led to 12,000-acre jewel
Searching for a fabulous source of gold formerly belonging to a friend who'd mysteriously disappeared, miners stumbled across Crater Lake. They never found the gold, though; could it be that it's still out there somewher…
Did L. Ron Hubbard battle Japanese subs off Astoria?
Pulp writer and religious figure L. Ron Hubbard figures prominently in the most spectacular story of action against “Japanese submarines” in Oregon waters. It's called, with tongue firmly in cheek, the “Battle of Cape Lo…
‘Desperado’ became P-town’s first police chief
James Lappeus came to Portland from the gold fields of California, where he was a gambler, saloonkeeper and general mining-town rowdy. His career as a cop was dogged by rumors he'd offered to spring a murderer for a $1,0…
Busting out of the joint was job for a safecracker
Of all the prisoners who tried to escape from Oregon's state prison, the “yeggs” were most successful — if “successful” is the right word. Their schemes for leaving the jailhouse behind included a tunneling scheme right…
Rusty derelict turned out to be Liberty Ship lifeboat
What looked like a rotting-away hunk of scrap steel was a rare artifact of Portland's World War II shipbuilding industry — but the discovery was made just a few days too late. (Zigzag, Columbia County; 1940s) (For text a…
How Oregon almost lost public access to beaches
After a beachfront landowner discovered a loophole in the law and fenced off “his” beach, other oceanfront property owners were eager to follow suit. Governor Tom McCall was determined to stop them, and this is how he di…
