Latest Willamette Podcast Episodes
Governor’s kindness led to fatal consequences
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 14, 2024 14:00 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsAS EVERY SENSIBLE person knows, there is pretty much no such thing as being “cruel to be kind.” Sometimes it does work the other way around, though. Every now and then you run across a story in which someone did something that was intended as a kindness, but turned out to be anything but. Such a...
Pioneer Courthouse square once the site of landmark hotel
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 13, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe grand monument to the Gilded Age was a municipal architectural treasure and hosted U.S. presidents, but was razed in the 1950s to make way for a parking garage; all that remains is a wrought-iron rail. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatorego...
Clones with Matt Revelette
Bud Break - June 12, 2024 18:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsJoin wine educator Dan Walsh as he interviews Matt Revelette on all things wine clones.
Oregon governor nearly became President; lucky for us, he didn’t
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 12, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsNew York schemers sought to have former Oregon governor and Senator Joseph Lane named President. Had they succeeded, the Civil War likely would have been the North seceding from the South, and possibly an independent Pacific Republic in the West. (Salem, Marion County; 1860s) (For text and pictur...
Horse racing, and fixing races, were wildly popular
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 11, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsTHERE’S NOT A WHOLE LOT going on these days in the Eastern Oregon community of Jordan Valley (pop. 181). But 100 years ago, this tiny, remote hamlet was home to a racetrack that may have been the fastest in the Northwest. (Jordan Valley, Malheur County; 1890s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see h...
Life in 1880s Salem and Portland, a banker's-eye view (WPA oral-history interview with Cyrus Woodworth)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 10, 2024 14:00 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with Cyrus Woodworth, a retired banker and former telegrapher living in Salem and Portland from the 1870s to the 1930s. He actually organized one of the first car races, a match between two 'merry Oldsmobile'-era horseless carriages that reached a...
Man’s theft of widow’s home too much for jury
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 07, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsESPECIALLY IN THE LATE 1800s, the Oregon frontier was no stranger to acts of judicial lynching – where the local legal system was corrupted to provide cover for murder. What’s more unusual, though, was an 1852 event that amounted to judicial cattle rustling. The cattle that the Benton County co...
Boozy generosity turned tables for Prineville Nine
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 06, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWall Street financial wizard Thomas Lawson happened to be in town and betting on Prineville. With Silver Lake up 9-0 halfway through, he knew just what to do: Buy the other team a round of drinks ... or two, or three .... (Prineville, Crook County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbe...
Tips on Retail Events
Bud Break - June 05, 2024 18:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsJoin Wine Educators Katie Werthmuller and Dan Walsh as they dive into tips and tricks for retail events.
Timber baron made Coos Bay a shipbuilding capitol
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 05, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsAsa Mead Simpson came out West for the Gold Rush, but he soon learned there was more money in the timber that blanketed its hills than would ever be scratched out of its rapidly dwindling gold mines. (North Bend, Coos County; 1850s, 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/141...
Kiwanda dory fleet launch straight into the surf
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 04, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratings“No one seems to know how the present Kiwanda dory evolved,” wrote Portland Oregonian wildlife editor Don Helm in a 1968 article, “but it revolutionized the sport and made Pacific City the dory capital of the world.” (Pacific City, Tillamook County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offb...
Hard-rock mining in north Baker County (WPA oral-history interview with Mrs. Kitty Gray)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 03, 2024 14:00 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer Manly Banister's oral history interview with Mrs. Kitty Gray. Mrs. Gray was involved in management of several hard-rock mines during the go-go years of Baker County company gold mining in the first quarter of the 20th century, especially in and around Cornucopia, and offered a lot of i...
How Abe Tichner hustled rubes at 1870s county fair
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 31, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe gregarious young entrepreneur usually cleared $2,500 – that’s the equivalent of $57,000 in modern currency – on each county fair. His profit margin hovered around 92 percent. How did he do it? By selling cheap cigars — wrapped in an expensive story. (Portland, Multnomah and Washington County...
John H. Mitchell, Oregon’s own Snidely Whiplash
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 30, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsJohn Hipple dumped his family, changed his name and moved West. A dozen years and a few easy-money real-estate swindles later, he was a hugely successful railroad-and-timber lawyer and a U.S. Senator. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatore...
Arcanum with Lawrence Cronin
Bud Break - May 29, 2024 18:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsJoin Advanced Somm David Reuss and winemaker Lawrence Cronin as they discuss the winery, Arcanum.
Shouldn’t Oregon’s official language be Chinook?
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 29, 2024 14:00 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsSure, most people speak English. But there’s an older language whose roots run far deeper in Oregon’s culture and history, and it’s one that nearly every Oregonian knows a word or two of. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1411d.314.chinook-jargon.html)
Bad climbers kept getting stuck on Haystack Rock
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 28, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsIt was a notoriously difficult climb, especially on the descent; but the 'idiots climbing Haystack Rock' dynamic didn't become a serious issue until after the helicopter was invented, and climbers started demanding that they be rescued. When they were, the propwash blew all the baby birds out of ...
Rural life in the Willamette Valley in the 1870s (WPA oral-history interview with Nettie Spencer)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 27, 2024 14:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratings'When I asked Miss Spencer about her ancestors she exhibited a tree full of monkeys and said that they were the first one," writes WPA writer Walker Winslow in his oral history interview with Nettie Spencer, which he conducted in 1938 — a little over a decade after the famous 'Scopes Monkey Trial...
Mayors Lee, Schrunk set mid-century P-town tone
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 24, 2024 14:00 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe history of Portland mayors in the 20th century largely comes down to the story of the struggle of progressive reformers against various forms of corruption and vice. Put that way, it sounds like a clean morality play: good vs. evil. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. (Portland, Multn...
In 1880s Portland, at least one mayor paid to play
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 23, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWhen Dr. James Chapman was elected mayor of Portland in 1882, it was his third non-consecutive stint as P-town’s top executive. His previous two mayoralties had been relatively unremarkable. This one, his third and final stint, would be different. Things started out reasonably well, although a c...
Monterey Madness: Harvest 2023
Bud Break - May 22, 2024 18:00 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsJoin Wine Educator Wendi Hammond as she interviews the Monterey production crew on harvest 2023.
Frontier Portland mayors could be drama queens
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 22, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsOver the years, the city of Portland has had its share of controversy and drama in the Mayor’s office. At times, the political tableaux in the top job in Oregon’s biggest town have ripened into scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a Vaudeville act. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1860s, 1870s, 18...
Lonely Oregon boy grew up to be a comics legend
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 21, 2024 14:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsSometime in April of 1960, a shy, retiring, hard-of-hearing comic-book artist named Carl Barks got a letter at his quiet suburban home. When he opened it, he found that it was a letter from a stranger named John Spicer. And to his astonishment, he found that it was — a fan letter. “Believe it or...
Early songs and ballads, and memories of Homer Davenport (WPA oral-history interview with Mrs. Cora Ayers Jamerson)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 20, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with Cora Ayers Jamerson, a 'small, alert gray-haired' widow and retired schoolteacher and apartment-house superintendent, in her neat but cluttered apartment in 1938. Mrs. Jamerson talked about the songs and ballads folks liked to sing in 1880s P...
Eugene’s first college died after president’s gunfight
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 17, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsColumbia College, atop College Hill in Eugene, was founded just before the Civil War. It closed after pro-slavery board members took over, and its president skipped town while under indictment for attempted murder; but while it lasted, it gave Eugene a taste for the college-town life that led dir...
‘Harmonial Brotherhood’ free-love cult was a disaster
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 16, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe catastrophic failure of several of the Utopian cult's articles of faith — especially on matters of diet and health care — had doomed the community to misery and sickness before it even got a start. (Central America; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1412a.luelling-l...
Oregon nursery industry founder’s ‘Free Love’ cult
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 15, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsFormer devout Quaker Henderson Luelling developed some odd beliefs in late middle age, founded a cult called “Harmonial Brotherhood,” and led his followers into the Central American wilderness. It did not go well. (Milwaukie, Clackamas County; 1840s, 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://off...
Selling Techniques with Ron Wolfe - The Six Legs
Bud Break - May 15, 2024 07:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsJoin winery ambassador Katie Phillips as she and Ron Wolfe talk about The Six Legs of Sales
‘Miner 29ers’ beat the Depression with gold pan
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 14, 2024 14:00 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWhen the Great Depression hit, many Oregonians decided to head for mining claims. The life of a gold miner was rustic and tough, but in an age of bread lines and 'hoovervilles,' it beat the alternative. (Southern and Central Oregon; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/190...
Life around Oswego Lake, and square dancing (WPA oral-history interview with C.T. Dickinson)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - May 13, 2024 14:00 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with pioneer Oswego resident C.T. Dickinson, recalling how the land was when the lake was thick with fish and ducks and people were thin on the land. Dickinson also served as a square-dance caller, so if you're yearning for some traumatic memories...
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