Offbeat Oregon History podcast

Offbeat Oregon History podcast


Latest Episodes

The short, tragic story of P-town’s municipal whale
April 24, 2024

“Ethelbert” the orca somehow ended up stranded miles from the ocean in the Columbia Slough, much to the delight of most Portland residents. But...

Bootlegger ‘lobster trap’ a huge but costly success
April 23, 2024

No one in Tillamook County even suspected the Lee Film Company was a front for government Prohibition enforcement until the trap was sprung ...

The Portland mining engineer who invented fracking (WPA oral-history interview with William Hampton)
April 22, 2024

WPA writer Walker Winslow's oral history interview with William Huntley Hampton, a son of Brigham Young although not a Mormon, who was probably Oregon's second most famous mining engineer...

Brothel owner Carrie Carrie’s sidekicks proved bad at corpse disposal (Part 2 of 2)
April 19, 2024

On the morning of Nov. 25, 1881, two men were walking to work along the North End waterfront when they saw something incongruous in the river...

Bordello madam Carrie Bradley was a real-life Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Part 1 of 2 parts)
April 18, 2024

The Femme Fatale, like most really satisfying tropes in fiction, is based on real life....

Scholarly Albany flyer was the real father of Oregon aviation
April 17, 2024

In a race with Portland neophile Henry Wemme to be the first owner of an airplane in Oregon, Cornell-educated John Burkhart was two weeks too late; but...

Was Bridge of the Gods real? Almost certainly yes
April 16, 2024

The geographical evidence isn't there; but every nearby Indian community has legends about the river tunneling underground for miles...

The maddest man in old Portland (WPA oral-history interview)
April 15, 2024

Young Charley Imus was the son of the local undertaker, and he and a school friend were tasked with watching over a corpse while an Irish wake was going on...

Cressman was Oregon’s real-life Indiana Jones
April 12, 2024

IN 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....

A long-gone gold town’s short but colorful past
April 11, 2024

This was the town where the Eastern Oregon Gold Rush of '61 got started, and it was a wild and lawless place...