エピソード

  • When Portland flooded, locals raised the sidewalks
    2025/06/09
    But in 1861, the worst floods in state history turned the Willamette Valley into one giant half-million-acre lake and swept several burgeoning towns away. And, despite our flood-control dams, someday it will probably happen again. (Willamette Valley; 1860s, 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1704c.willamette-floods-1894-1861-439.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Huge 1934 P-town dock strike paralyzed the state
    2025/06/09
    Half a century of winning labor disputes left the waterfront employers feeling overconfident. When the Portland longshoremen walked out, they expected it would be a repeat of earlier victories for them ... it wasn't. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1304a-1934-dock-strike-paralyzed-oregon.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • How Portland and Kaiser helped ‘save the Empire’
    2025/06/08
    Arguably, the outcome of World War II became inevitable on the day the S.S. Star of Oregon slid into the Columbia River. It was followed by a torrent of new ships — far more than the Nazis could ever hope to sink. (Vanport, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1612c.portland-liberty-ships-saved-canada-422.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    10 分
  • Stubborn citizen, McCall teamed up for Bottle Bill
    2025/06/07
    Litter enraged outdoor enthusiast Richard Chambers, so he launched a one-man campaign to pass a deposit bill. Then Gov. Tom McCall leaped aboard, and Oregon became the first state to ban nonreturnable bottles and cans. (Pacific City, Tillamook County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1810c.1812.bottle-bill-tom-mccall.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    10 分
  • Finn on KPNW's Wake Up Call: Klondike Kate and the Case of the Fake Katfight
    2025/06/06
    A recording of an on-air conversation with Bill Lundun and Gerry Snyder of the Wake Up Call on Eugene's KPNW Radio AM 1120. Topic: There is a persistent myth that the 'real Klondike Kate' was a female Mountie named Kate Ryan, and that Kate Rockwell, the dancer, stole her name and reputation. It's a bogus story — the two women lived and worked on opposite sides of the Yukon Territory — but the real story of Klondike Kate, the Belle of Dawson who later took up a land claim near Brothers and became known as Aunt Kate of Farewell Bend, is way more interesting than the myth. (Brothers, Deschutes County; 1910s, 1920s) (For the full story, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2403d-1108b.klondike-kate-katfight-1of2-137.641.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    22 分
  • Empty-nester’s ‘second act’: Riverboat bordello madam
    2025/07/04
    Paddlewheel riverboats and fancy bordello girls seem like a match made in pop-culture heaven, don’t they? Plush “parlour houses” and luxurious riverboats both were common in the “naughty nineties,” and both represented probably the closest thing to luxury a working man or woman would find in a frontier waterfront city like Portland or San Francisco, or even St. Louis or New Orleans. And yeah, there were times when the twain did meet in real life. Naïve farmboy Aquilla Ernest Clark was lured into the clutches of Portland shanghaier Larry Sullivan by a flock of beautiful, friendly ladies obviously hired for the purpose, who joined him and eight other victims on a chartered riverboat for what they thought was a “birthday party” cruise. (Here’s a link to that story.) And who can forget Eliza “Boneyard Mary” Bunets, the 40-year-old solo practitioner who apparently entertained her customers aboard mothballed sternwheelers in the Oregon Steam and Navigation Co.’s “boneyard” at the foot of Flanders Street? (Here’s a link to that one.) But the combination seems to have reached its peak in the case of a Portland madam named Nancy Boggs, who actually operated a bordello aboard a 40-by-80-foot barge anchored in the middle of the Willamette River, in the early 1880s.... (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2502b1007d.nancy-boggs-floating-bordello-688.120.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    15 分
  • The Fall of the House of Klux: Greed and hypocrisy run amok (3 of 3)
    2025/07/03
    Klan-backed politicians won a big victory that they interpreted as a mandate for ethnic and religious cleansing, then found out the hard way that they'd misjudged the voters' intentions. (Statewide; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1304d-fall-of-the-house-of-klux.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    11 分
  • How the Ku Klux Klan got into power in ’20s Oregon (2 of 3)
    2025/07/02
    The secret society of anonymous xenophobic vigilantes spread through Oregon society like a virus in 1922, and by the time elections were held that year, it was ready to seize the reins of power. But it wouldn't keep them for long. (Statewide, 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1304c-rise-of-the-ku-klux-klan-in-oregon.html)
    続きを読む 一部表示
    9 分