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  • Oregon's second-largest city was built in six months (Part 1 of 2)

    Oregon's second-largest city was built in six months (Part 1 of 2)
    2026/04/27
    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 American men were being drafted into the Army, swelling its ranks with green recruits. Sooner or not much later they’d be in combat, fighting for their lives. There was no time to be lost — those combat noobs had to be trained and hardened and prepared so that they would have as good a chance as possible when thrown into the fight. With that in mind, the Army started looking for suitable locations for a combat-training campus between Portland and San Francisco on the West Coast. It would need to be about 65,000 acres and, in addition to the usual building sites and gunnery ranges, it would have to include geography similar to the sites where the fighting was expected to happen: rolling hills, steep slopes, swampy terrain, thick forests, and something approximating jungle foliage. Moving very fast — after all, new conscripts were coming in all the time — the Army settled on two prospective sites: one near Eugene, and one just north of Corvallis. The Corvallis site won the toss — there were fewer residents to be displaced, and the railroad and highway infrastructure was more developed. That was in June 1941. By the end of that year, the funds were allocated and the plans drawn up, and nine months later Oregon’s second largest city had spring into being out of the swampy ground. (Camp Adair, Benton County; 1940s, 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2505b1004d.camp-adair-699.071.html)
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    6 分
  • Before news “crusade,” milk was killing babies

    Before news “crusade,” milk was killing babies
    2026/04/24
    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 deaths as a result. (Portland, Multnomah and Columbia county; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1208b-bad-milk-was-killing-babies-in-portland.html)
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    8 分
  • Quest for lost gold mine led to 12,000-acre jewel

    Quest for lost gold mine led to 12,000-acre jewel
    2026/04/23
    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 somewhere? (Yreka, Siskiyou County (Calif.); 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207b-crater-lake-discovered-by-legendary-gold-mine-seekers.html)
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    11 分
  • Did L. Ron Hubbard battle Japanese subs off Astoria?

    Did L. Ron Hubbard battle Japanese subs off Astoria?
    2026/04/22
    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 Lookout.” (Off Cannon Beach, Clatsop County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407a.sunken-submarine-rumors.html)
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    10 分
  • ‘Desperado’ became P-town’s first police chief

    ‘Desperado’ became P-town’s first police chief
    2026/04/21
    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 $1,000 bribe. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1850s, 1860s, 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207a-james-lappeus-crooked-gambler-police-chief-in-portland.html)
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    9 分
  • Busting out of the joint was job for a safecracker

    Busting out of the joint was job for a safecracker
    2026/04/20
    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 out of “The Shawshank Redemption.” (Salem, Marion County; 1890s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207d-safecrackers-were-good-at-jailbreaks.html)
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    8 分
  • Rusty derelict turned out to be Liberty Ship lifeboat

    Rusty derelict turned out to be Liberty Ship lifeboat
    2026/04/17
    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 and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1207e-rusty-lifeboat-turned-out-to-be-relic-of-second-world-war.html)
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    7 分
  • How Oregon almost lost public access to beaches

    How Oregon almost lost public access to beaches
    2026/04/16
    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 did it. (Cannon Beach, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1206a-how-tom-mccall-saved-public-beaches.html)
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    9 分