Latest Willamette Podcast Episodes
Riverboats on Willamette towed barns, fetched fish
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - July 05, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe Willamette River was running high and wild on the morning of Feb. 5, 1890, as Alden and Arthur Graham set out from Oregon City in their sternwheel riverboat for the daily run to Portland. They arrived in Portland in what must have been record time, dodging logs and small floating buildings ...
For teenage sailor, visit to Portland ended in a life sentence
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - July 04, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsLike the hero of an 1800s “cautionary tale,” 17-year-old Joseph Swards stepped off the ship, fell in with bad company, got caught up in a robbery that went horribly wrong — and in the end was lucky he wasn't hanged. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeator...
Roseburg’s ‘Champagne Riot’ was probably not what you think
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - July 03, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe year after the Civil War ended, the partisans of North and South still clung to their resentments in Douglas County. On Christmas Day, those hard feelings broke out in a knock-down-drag-out that left two men dead. (Roseburg, Douglas County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeato...
Tall talker from The Dalles was Oregon's own 'International Murderer o' Mystery'
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - July 02, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsHe called himself James Cook, and spoke with an English accent. But when asked about his past, he spun fanciful and ever-changing stories full of world travels, tiger hunts, shanghaiings and the like; he went to his death a total enigma. (The Dalles, Wasco County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, s...
Ben Holladay, Abigail Scott Duniway were old friends of hers (WPA oral-history interview with Minerva Thessing)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - July 01, 2024 14:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with Minerva Thessing. Ms. Thessing grew up near Milwaukie in the 1860s and was friends with some of Oregon's most famous pioneer characters, from Ben Holladay to Abigail Scott Duniway. She also seems to have had a knack for psychic matters. (For ...
West Coast was the Detroit of fishboat engines
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 28, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsThe engines that went into these old-school boats were slow, heavy, primitive, and built in one of several factories in San Francisco. In fact, until the mid-1930s San Francisco Bay was the Detroit of the marine-engine industry; the Union Gas Engine Company, est. 1885, was one of the very first m...
How the Prineville Vigilantes were defeated without a shot
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 27, 2024 14:00 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsCrook County citizens finally decided they'd had enough of the secretive lynchings and killings; they banded together and defeated the gang of masked riders without a single shot being fired. (Prineville, Crook County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1212a-prineville-...
Lynching kicked off scary vigilante era in Prineville
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 26, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsIn Crook County, the early 1880s were like something out of a Louis L'Amour novel: Masked riders galloping around by night, dispensing what they saw as justice. It all started with the lynching of an innocent man. (Part 1 of 2) (Prineville, Crook County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https:/...
To return to sea, ship had to ‘sail’ through the woods
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 25, 2024 14:00 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsAfter Columbia Lightship broke its lines and drifted ashore, the salvage bid was won by a house-moving company from Portland — which, rather than trying to pull the stranded ship off the beach, built a road, trucked it over the peninsula, and launched it in Baker Bay. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop...
The fortune-telling mind reader's story (WPA oral-history interview with 'Miss Smith')
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 24, 2024 14:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer William C. Haight's 1939 oral history interview with a fascinating fortune-teller he identified only as 'Miss Smith,' in her tea-room business in Portland's Carlton Hotel. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001945/ )
Storied editor lost feud with Oregon’s first woman doc
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 21, 2024 14:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsOn any list of Oregon “firsts,” there’s one name that almost never pops up - Dr. Adaline M. Weed. Which is understandable, because although Dr. Weed was the first female physician in the Oregon Territory, she was not a “regular” doctor – she was a hydropathist, a practitioner of “water cure.” Ma...
Horrifying asylum poison mix-up left dozens dead
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 20, 2024 14:00 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsSent downstairs to fetch a pan of powdered milk, a kitchen assistant at the Oregon State Hospital dipped his scoop into the wrong bin — and brought back six pounds of roach poison. It was mixed into the eggs and fed to 467 people. (Salem, Marion County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://...
West Coast’s first novel was a torrid page-turner
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 19, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsShe had a record of uninhibited and acerbic writing; she was preparing what appeared to be a super-racy tell-all memoir; and she had just secured a divorce from a prominent community member about whom they’d all heard some pretty tantalizing rumors. What was not to like? (French Prairie, Marion C...
Oregon’s literary legacy built on “true confession”
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 18, 2024 14:00 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsMARGARET JEWETT BAILEY WAS not only Oregon’s first author of novel-length fiction, she was also the West Coast’s first published female author, and its first female newspaper journalist. She was also one of the most colorful characters of a remarkably colorful age. She could be absolutely savage...
He's been workin' on the railroad, all the livelong day (WPA oral-history interview with Joseph Stangler, former railroad worker)
Offbeat Oregon History podcast - June 17, 2024 14:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 160 ratingsWPA writer William C. Haight's oral history interview with Joseph Stangler, a 62-year-old veteran of James J. Hill's railroad building workcrews who was reinventing himself as a concrete artist. This oral history is a fascinating glimpse into the life and work of one of the wandering workmen who ...
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.
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