Latest Roseburg Podcast Episodes
Cressman was Oregon’s real-life Indiana Jones
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 12, 2024 14:00 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsIN THE SUMMER of 1981 a little action-adventure movie titled Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, and fans have been speculating ever since on who the character of Indiana Jones might be based on. The most popular speculation — Vanity Fair magazine goes so far as to opine that he is “almost certain...
A long-gone gold town’s short but colorful past
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 11, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThis was the town where the Eastern Oregon Gold Rush of '61 got started, and it was a wild and lawless place; town ordinances did prohibit stabbing or shooting people “in public places,” but otherwise the town was mostly wide open. (Auburn, Baker County; 1860s, 1880s) (For text and pictures, see ...
Ship owner’s offer of bonus led directly to shipwreck
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 10, 2024 14:00 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsOn the bright side, though, the owner of the Desdemona did get to go down in history — or, rather, geography — after the deadly sandbar that took his ship was dubbed Desdemona Sands. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410c.309.desdem...
How an old banana peel changed Oregon history
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 09, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsUp-and-coming Democrat Oswald West had been sent to Portland on a last-ditch attempt to talk Harry Lane into running for governor. But Lane said no; so West decided to give it a go himself. (Salem, Marion County; 1910) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907b.os-west-banana-pee...
Recollections of an 1880s Astoria salmon fisherman (WPA oral-history interview)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 08, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsFans of shanghaiing-era waterfront culture will not want to miss this WPA oral history, collected in 1938. Retired fisherman Charles deLashmutt recalls stories of gillnet salmon fishermen 'corking' each other, brawling in bars, and buying hooch from the 'whiskey scows' that anchored 30 feet off t...
Battleship USS Oregon was lost in Pearl Harbor attack — sort of
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 05, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsTIME NEVER WAS on the U.S.S. Oregon’s side. She was launched in 1896, in the middle of a remarkable period of torrid innovation and development in the history of warships, a time when ship designs were only good for about ten years before something better came along. (Portland, Multnomah County; ...
P.R. wizard Gilbert Gable managed Jefferson ‘secession’ like a movie (Part 2 of 2)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 04, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratings“Patriotic Jeffersonians intend to secede each Thursday until further notice,” the rebels said, and played their parts in the grand production to a nationwide audience as newsreel cameras rolled and reporters scribbled in notepads. (Port Orford, Curry County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see ht...
Jefferson ‘secession’ of ’41 a brilliant publicity stunt (Part 1 of 2)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 03, 2024 16:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsBoisterous and colorful man P.R. man Gilbert Gable, mayor of Port Orford, drew on the frustrations of the West Coast's remotest counties in an effort to get the state to invest in decent highways. (Part 1 of 2 parts on the 1941 Jefferson 'secession') (Port Orford, Curry County; 1940s) (For text a...
Surge of rebel refugees changed Oregon politics
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 03, 2024 15:00 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsAfter the Civil War, refugees from the devastated South flooded west, seeking a fresh start ... and for a few years, Oregon looked like Dixie on the Left Coast. They even went so far as to try to de-ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. (Salem, Marion County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https:/...
Oregon City was home of first electric power grid
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 03, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsEntrepreneurs figured out how to send power long distances for the first time in history; later, after a flood wiped out power station, they pioneered alternating-current transmission. (Oregon City, Clackamas County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201a-oregon-city-...
Express clerk’s silence foiled Eugene train robber
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 02, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratings(NOTE: For organizational reasons, this column is being published earlier than usual. You may already have heard this one.) The masked outlaw planned the job out carefully, and thought he was ready for anything. But he met his match in the cool-handed express man, and had to leave almost empty-ha...
Recollections of an Oswego native from the days of the Oregon Iron Company (WPA oral-history interview)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - April 01, 2024 14:00 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA Writer Sara B. Wrenn one day walked all the way from downtown Portland to the town of Oswego to interview a pioneer woman ... who was not at home. (Ironic, isn't it, that this article should have popped up on April Fools' Day?) Hoping to salvage something from the long walk, Ms. Wrenn asked a...
Murderer avoided gallows by faking a 2-year coma
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 29, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsCharles Fiester lay there on his cot, eyes open, staring at nothing, pretending to be catatonic, for 515 days ... knowing that when his ruse was discovered, he'd be hanged. (Kerby, Josephine County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1803a.fiester-murderer-faked-insanity...
Vaudeville Susie’s Riot; or, Oregon’s Helen of Troy
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 28, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe Rebel sympathizers resented the Union soldiers taking all the seats when Vaudeville star Susie Robinson of Corvallis took the stage. The soldiers wouldn't back down. Then somebody pulled a pistol ... and the battle was on. (Corvallis, Benton County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://...
Union squabbles were part of life on the waterfront
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 27, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsEvery few years, in the early 1900s, burly and hard-fisted dock workers got into a battle of wills with the autocratic sea-captains who ran the shipping companies. Most of the time, the dock workers got the worst of it. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s, 1910s, 1920s) (For text and pictures, see...
Malheur County rancher saves pioneer Oregon aviator’s life
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 26, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsBarnstormer Ted Barber was down to his last half-cup of gasoline when Ralph Grove rescued him by lighting up a field with the headlights of his car; Ted's old Waco 9 biplane lived to fly the next day, and so did he. (Near Andrews, Malheur County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeat...
Recollections of an old Oregon railroad telegrapher and union lawyer, Part 2 of 2 (WPA oral-history interview)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 25, 2024 14:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsOn Nov. 28, 1938, Federal Writers Project worker Andrew Sherbert sat down with a stocky, animated 77-year-old attorney named George Estes to talk about Mr. Estes' recollections of working in the 1800s, first as a telegraph operator and later as an attorney for the Telegrapher's Union at Southern ...
Decade-long dam dispute resolved with dynamite (Episode for Friday, March 22)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 15, 2024 14:40 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsIN THE SMALL hours of the morning of Aug. 16, 1906, a powerful explosion jolted residents awake near the little town of Willamette, which today is a neighborhood of West Linn. It came from the direction of the nearby Tualatin River. The cause was soon discovered. When the first rays of the morni...
Did monk from China “discover” Oregon 1,600 years ago? (Episode for Thursday, March 21)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 15, 2024 14:30 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsLegend of a monk's journey to a land called “Fusang” dates back to 499 A.D.; is it possible that Fusang was Oregon? Or was the whole thing a complete fabrication? (Oregon Coast, 400s; yeah, that's right, literally 1,500 years ago.) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1103b-was-b...
Did monk from China “discover” Oregon 1,600 years ago?
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 15, 2024 14:30 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsLegend of a monk's journey to a land called “Fusang” dates back to 499 A.D.; is it possible that Fusang was Oregon? Or was the whole thing a complete fabrication? (Oregon Coast, 400s; yeah, that's right, literally 1,500 years ago.) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1103b-was-b...
Bridge-building scandal aroused Portlanders’ fury (Episode for Wed, March 20)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 15, 2024 14:20 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsCrafty county commissioners tried to rig the bidding so their favorite bid, padded to the tune of half a million 1924 dollars, would win —but they didn't move quite fast enough. Three months later, they'd all been thrown out of office. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, s...
Tiny home-built schooner saved Tillamook settlers (Episode for Tue, March 19)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 15, 2024 14:10 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsAfter the only skipper willing to brave their fearsome river bar died, the only way to get wheat and cheese to market was to build their own trading ship — which they did. (Tillamook County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1102d-tillamook-tiny-schooner.html)
Recollections of an old Oregon railroad telegrapher and union lawyer, Part 1 of 2 (WPA oral-history interview; episode for Mon, March 18)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 15, 2024 14:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsOn Nov. 28, 1938, Federal Writers Project worker Andrew Sherbert sat down with a stocky, animated 77-year-old attorney named George Estes to talk about Mr. Estes' recollections of working in the 1800s, first as a telegraph operator and later as an attorney for the Telegrapher's Union at Southern ...
Was legendary city of Quivira on Oregon Coast? (Episode for Fri, March 15)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 11, 2024 14:50 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsNative Americans told Coronado there was a fabulous gold-and-turquoise city called Quivira just to the east -- or was it the north? All he found were Indian villages. But, was there a real city behind the legend? More specifically, was that city near Port Orford? (Port Orford, Curry County; 1540s...
Chinese smuggler saved woman and her baby, then vanished (episode for Thu, March 14)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 11, 2024 14:40 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsIn Gold Rush-era Oregon, the most skilled miners were probably the Chinese — but they were in constant danger. To avoid being robbed, they entrusted their gold to professional couriers who masqueraded as penniless vagabonds. This is a story from the life of one of them, a man we know only as 'Che...
Massive passenger liner won race with fiery death(episode for Wed, March 13)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 11, 2024 14:30 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsCalm seas, a hard-working crew and a cool-headed skipper helped the steamship Congress and everyone on board survive a terrifying night after a fire broke out in the cargo hold and spread throughout the ship. (Coos Bay, Coos County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/13...
Rabies epidemic was like a war in Eastern Oregon (episode for Tue, March 12)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 11, 2024 14:20 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsState health officials scoffed at the idea of hydrophobia in Oregon — until people started dying. It was the start of a decade of attacks by mad coyotes, when folks carried shotguns everywhere and nature seemed to be in open revolt. (Central and Eastern Oregon; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see...
Announcement: All This Week Episodes at Once, and Why
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 11, 2024 14:10 - 3 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsI've run into a little trouble with my Internet hosting service. My Website has gotten too large for their taste and they want me to upgrade to a $120-a-month 'dedicated server' or 'virtual private server' account. Hey, I do this stuff for fun, I don't make money on it ... Anyway so I went shoppi...
Recollections of an old Oregon mining-law specialist (WPA oral-history interview)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 11, 2024 14:00 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsOn May 3, 1938, Federal Writers Project worker Andrew Sherbert sat down with a tall, urbane, professional 70-year-old mining-law specialist named J. Thorburn Ross to talk about Mr. Ross's recollections of working in old Portland for George Himes and later experience in the area of Sailors' Diggin...
Innocent man’s sacrifice averted deadly ‘tong war’
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - March 08, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsIt was obvious to nearly everyone that Chee Gong was innocent. But one of his tong brothers had murdered Lee Yik and disappeared, and blood had to answer for blood. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1802c.tong-war-in-portland-averted-with-h...
Related Roseburg Topics