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PODCAST

Offbeat Oregon History podcast

www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com)

A daily (5-day-a-week) podcast feed of true Oregon stories -- of heroes and rascals, of shipwrecks and lost gold. Stories of shanghaied sailors and Skid Road bordellos and pirates and robbers and unsolved mysteries. An exploding whale, a couple shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. From the archives of the Offbeat Oregon History syndicated newspaper

history places & travel

All Episodes

00:11:18

Fired town marshal murdered his replacement

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/16

EVERYONE IN THE tiny Harney County town of Westfall knew something bad was going to happen after City Marshal Asa Carey was fired for the second time. Carey had been an odd pick for city marshal, but maybe he’d been given the job because he wanted it badly — and Carey was a dangerous man to say “no” to. Basically, he was the “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” of Westfall ... right down to the “.32 gun in his pocket for fun,” about which more in a red-hot minute. And the town council really should have known

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00:11:12

Bad boat design led to a Coast Guard catastrophe...

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/15

Bafflingly, the Coast Guard's biggest rescue boat on the Columbia River Bar was one that hadn't been designed to survive a rollover. So, in early 1961, it didn't — and neither did five members of its six-man crew. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201d-triumph-coast-guard-disaster-2.html)

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00:08:48

Deadly disaster started as a routine job for rescuers...

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/14

Mammoth seas on the legendary Columbia River Bar, plus the untimely removal of a vital piece of life-saving gear by short-sighted military brass, cost the lives of five Coast Guardsmen that night. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201c-triumph-disaster-coast-guard-columbia-bar.html)

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00:10:53

“Unwritten Law” didn’t cover murder of in-laws

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/13

Alfred Belding targeted his wife's family with murderous rampage, shot at his young son, and tried to claim “temporary insanity.” It didn't work ... and neither did his crackpot plan for a prison break. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1804e.UL-alfred-belding-murderer-493.html)

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00:08:40

Deadly ’64 tsunami did a lot of damage in Oregon

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/12

On the evening of March 23, 1964, Seaside resident Margaret Gammon hadn’t been asleep more than an hour or two when she was awakened by howling. It was the community fire siren, blaring at full blast without stopping. She looked at the clock. It was 11:30 p.m. “I lay in bed thinking to myself, ‘Why doesn’t that fellow at the fire station get his big thumb off the siren button so we can all go back to sleep, and let the firemen take care of the fire?’” she recalled later, in an article for Oregon

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00:14:49

Rain foiled enemy pilot’s plan to start a forest fire

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/09

AROUND 6 A.M. on the morning of Sept. 9, 1942, Forest Service lookout Howard Gardner heard the sound of an approaching airplane. Peering out into the South Coast pre-dawn gloaming light, Gardner made out a small seaplane, heading toward him, flying low, circling. Showtime! This was what Gardner was here for, bundled up in the little Forest Service firewatch lookout shack atop Mt. Emily. Nine months into the Second World War, Gardner’s duties had expanded a bit from what they had been a year before

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00:08:22

Cruise-ship skipper not first to ‘fall into a lifeboat’

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/08

Captains are supposed to be the last to leave their sinking ships, not the first. But that required act of valor has always been easier said than done — as evidenced by the story of the 1903 wreck of the S.S. South Portland off Cape Blanco. (Off Cape Blanco, Coos and Curry county; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1203a-steamer-captain-named-poultroon-of-the-sea.html)

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00:07:31

Tangent City Hall office cat was the city’s landlord

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/07

Willamette Valley town's mascot was the state's wealthiest housecat; he owned City Hall along with the farm it was built on, as well as an iconic red barn. Today, you can visit Kitty Kat's grave, but his barn has been moved to a new place. (Tangent, Linn County; 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201b-kitty-kat-owner-of-city-hall-richest-cat.html)

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00:10:22

The rise and fall of the Oregon Electric Railway

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/06

Created and priced as a luxury line to compete with coal-fired steam trains, the railroad collapsed rapidly after automobiles came on the scene. Would a cheaper, less opulent service have survived? (Willamette Valley; 1900s, 1910s, 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1612b.oregon-electric-rise-and-fall-421.html)

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00:12:08

Famous prospector’s death sparked 2 “lost gold” tales

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/05

They found the grizzled prospector’s body slumped over a sample of ore on the floor of the rude log cabin he’d been staying in, deep in the wilderness of southern Oregon, late in the spring of 1897. He’d apparently dropped dead one evening while assaying out the samples he’d gathered that day – probably poisoned by some of the chemicals he was using. But this wasn’t just any random gold prospector. This badly decomposed body was all that was mortal of the most famous prospector of the American West

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00:08:34

Company town of Valsetz is now just a memory

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/02

The little company town was located smack in the middle of the country's most productive tree-growing land; so, in the 1980s, the company drained its lake, bulldozed it into a pile, torched it, and replanted it with trees. (Valsetz, Polk County; 1920s, 1950s, 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1611c.valsetz-company-ghost-town-418.html)

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00:10:51

Bootleggers’ midnight jailbreak didn’t work out

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/05/01

Canadian bootlegger gang tried to bust three rumrunners out of Lincoln County Jail; it probably would have worked if they hadn't tried to take the confiscated whiskey too ... (Toledo, Lincoln County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1809d.whale-cove-rumrunners-jailbreak-514.html)

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00:09:07

Bootleggers’ bad luck was ‘whiskey galore’ for locals

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/30

In Whale Cove, Canadian rumrunners lost their boat engine at the worst possible time and ended up on shore. So they buried the booze, burned the boat, and tried to get away ... and got caught. (Depoe Bay, Lincoln County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1809c.whale-cove-rumrunners-shipwreck-513.html)

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00:08:42

Albany Prohibition liquor raid went horribly wrong

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/29

When the sheriff arrived to enforce the law, he brought with him a pro-temperance preacher from one of the local churches — whose presence seems to have sparked a murderous response from the man he'd come to arrest. (Plainview, Linn County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1611d.sheriff-murdered-in-liquor-raid-gone-bad-419.html)

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00:09:24

Mayor Baker’s theater defined Portland culture

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/28

From 1901 until the First World War, in the age just before movies became popular, Mayor George Baker's theater was the great shaper and driver of Portland's unique culture. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1803d.baker-stock-theater-in-portland-488.html)

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00:16:54

Why the legendary Virgil Earp is buried in P-town

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/25

PORTLAND'S RIVER VIEW Cemetery is the state’s oldest nonprofit cemetery, founded in 1882 by three of Portland’s most prominent citizens: Henry Corbett, Henry Failing, and William S. Ladd. All three of them are buried there — Ladd’s grave in particular was the target of a bizarre raid by a gang of grave robbers 15 years later, but that’s a story for another time. But the most visited grave at River View isn’t one of them. It’s not even the grave of an Oregonian. The name carved into the stone is

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00:12:59

Activist stopped state plan to forcibly sterilize people

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/24

Legendary physician Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair was an unstoppable force battling to get a eugenic-sterilization law passed ... until she encountered the immovable object that was medical-liberty activist Lora C. Little. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1808d.lora-little-vs-bethenia-owens-adair-eugenic-sterilization-510.html)

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00:07:36

Oregon City was home of first electric power grid

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/23

Entrepreneurs figured out how to send power long distances for the first time in history; later, after a flood wiped out power station, they pioneered alternating-current transmission. (Oregon City, Clackamas County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1201a-oregon-city-home-of-worlds-first-power-grid.html)

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00:13:25

Poet Sam Simpson's drunken quest for lost-cabin gold:...

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/22

By 1899, when Samuel L. Simpson’s drinking problem finally got around to killing him, he was essentially Oregon’s poet laureate — the Stewart Holbrook of the 1800s. But thirty years earlier, he was just another fresh-faced lawyer, just out of Willamette University’s law school. He’d moved to Portland to open his practice, and now he was sitting at his desk in his brand-new office in Portland, sipping a glass of rye and waiting for his first client to walk in the door. No one did. There were just

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00:10:06

Poet's quest for lost-cabin gold led to madness and...

Offbeat Oregon History podcast ·

2025/04/21

One of the most interesting and colorful Lost Cabin Gold Mine stories is the one told by frontier poet Sam Simpson, which supposedly took place in the hills south of Jacksonville in 1853. In this case, it’s not a mine that’s been lost — it’s a vault: a small stone-lined crypt stuffed with millions of dollars’ worth of freshly dug gold, and guarded by whatever remains of the skeletons of two long-dead men. (Siskiyou Mountains, Jackson County; 1853) (For text and pictures, see

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613 results

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