Buster Keaton brought Hollywood to Cottage Grove (Part 1 of 2)

Buster Keaton brought Hollywood to Cottage Grove (Part 1 of 2)

Author: www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com) December 11, 2025 Duration: 9:25
IF A COTTAGE Grove logger had been bonked on the head in January 1926, and woke up six months later, he would have scarcely recognized his home town. There was a whole new Main Street built way out east of Main Street, with businesses and boardinghouses and banks and everything.... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2409d-1002b.buster-keaton-the-general-in-cottage-grove-668.061.html)

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.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Offbeat Oregon History podcast
Podcast Episodes
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Duration: 8:47
Today known properly as Yaquina Head Light, the state's tallest lighthouse is a popular tourist attraction, and until recently was the home of the nation's only wheelchair-accessible tidepools. (For text and pictures, se…
Body snatchers plotted to steal dead mayor’s corpse (Part 1 of 2) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:43
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‘Blue Ruin’ drove Oregon to drink—and prohibition [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 11:34
Before Oregon was even a state, its territorial government outlawed all booze. Why? It all has to do with a fellow who could probably be called the true founder of the city of Portland — and his ever-bubbling moonshine s…
Larry Sullivan's 'second act' career dwarfed his first (Part 2 of 2) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 12:03
BY THE TIME George Graham Rice met Larry Sullivan at Sullivan and Grant’s “palace” in Goldfield, he was doing a booming business in Nevada as the owner and copywriter of an advertising agency, working with the local mine…
Boss shanghaier Sullivan’s mining-stock fraud career (Part 1 of 2) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:49
Smooth, polished, well-connected and ruthless, Larry Sullivan was essentially the Boss Tweed of the Portland waterfront from the early 1890s right up to the moment the music stopped. But in 1904, as the upcoming Lewis an…
Brides were stripped of U.S. citizenship at the altar [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:14
Women who'd married German men suddenly learned they'd been legally (and very unconstitutionally) made stateless, and were forced to register as 'enemy aliens'; those who'd married Chinese men fared even worse. (Statewid…