Offbeat Oregon History podcast

On May 15, 1937, WPA writer Sara B. Wrenn sat down with Bert Mendenhall for an oral-history interview, touching on Mendenhall's childhood memories in 1880s Portland as well as the stories told by his father, Rush Mendenhall, who crossed the continent on the Oregon Trail in 1847. (Source on Library of Congress Website: https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001987/ )

On that tense late-August weekend, tens of thousands of young people enjoyed themselves at McIver Park, while the much-dreaded riots failed to materialize. Was there a connection? Many voters thought so. (McIver Park, Clackamas County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1406c.291.vortex-the-event.html)

When McCall green-lighted the plan to distract potential street rioters with a week-long music festival, he fully expected to lose his job for it — whether it worked or not. (Salem, Marion County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1406b.290.vortex-part2-the-family.html)

To Governor Tom McCall, it looked like Portland was about to explode, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it ... until two long-haired young people came to his chief of staff with a very unusual plan. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1406a.vortex-part1-psu-riot.html)

Astronaut Stuart Roosa had a special relationship with the U.S. Forest Service, and when it was his turn to go to the moon, he proposed a science experiment. You can see the results towering over Peavy Hall at Oregon State University today. (Cape Canaveral, Florida; 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1405b.moon-trees-of-oregon.html)

In late 1937 or early 1938, writer Ardyth Gibbs (known to literary history today as Ardyth Kennely, author of several bestsellers in the 1950s) sat down with pioneer Newton McDaniel to talk about some early Willamette Valley history concerning the ghost town of Ellendale, in Polk County. (https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001936/)

For decades after the Tillamook Burn, classes of schoolchildren were bused out to help replant. Today, thousands of Oregonians, on trips to the beach, can point to a thriving patch of forest and say, “We planted those trees.” (Tillamook, Yamhill, Washington county; 1950s, 1960s, 1970s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408b.schoolkids-replant-tillamook.html)

Quick action by state forester Lynn Cronemiller prevented the devastating forest fire from claiming hundreds of lives when a furnace-stoking wind blew in from Eastern Oregon, flogging the fire toward the sea. (Washington, Yamhill, Tillamook County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408a.tillamook-burn-pt2-the-legacy.html)

A hard-pressed crew tried to snake just a few more logs out before quitting for the day, hoping nothing would go wrong in the tinder-dry forest. Unfortunately, something did. (Forest Grove, Washington County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407d.tillamook-burn-1933-outbreak.html)

Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, shipped to the Beaver State for training, learned combat lessons that would save their lives and help them win the Second World War during the huge campaign simulation known as the Oregon Maneuver. (Statewide; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1408d.oregon-maneuver-ww2.html)

In 1851, before Oregon was a state, a young schoolteacher named Elizabeth Millar stepped off a sternwheeler in Portland for the first time. These are her memories of that time, as recounted to her daughter, Mrs. J.T. Peters, 45 years later. In those 45 years, Miss Millar (now Mrs. Wilson) went on to become a very important person in frontier Oregon, the wife of a U.S. Congressman and Postmistress at The Dalles from 1884-1886. (For more details, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001971/)

ON THE EVENING of Sept. 28, 1995, Woney and Laurie Peters, of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, were driving back to their home behind the local elementary school when they noticed something wasn’t right. The first thing they noticed was the horses. They were confined in a corral in front of the house, next to the trampoline, which their teenage kids were playing on. The kids seemed fine — but the horses seemed terrified. They kept staring up at the hillside that ran along behind the house and the school. Inside the house, Woney got up on the balcony for a better view of what was bothering the horses. In the distance, on the hillside, he saw something — “a two-tone animal going through the trees,” he recounted, in an interview with Idaho Public Broadcasting. “And I told Laurie, I said, ‘That’s — there’s an African lion in our back yard.” (Siletz, Lincoln County; 1970s, 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-10.oregons-tiger-king-626.html)

Two motor lifeboat crews went out on the bar to save three surviving sailors. Both boats went to the bottom of the sea — but not a man was lost on either crew, and all the survivors were rescued. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1506d.CursedShips-RosecransRescue.html)

The big oil tanker had weathered two major catastrophes in the previous year — a stranding and a colossal fire. But for 33 doomed crew members, the third time would be the charm — or, rather, the hex. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1506c.cursed-ships-rosecrans-344.html)

Settlers in John Day in the late 1800s learned the healer of Kam Wah Chung could cure diseases others couldn't; all his patients survived the fatal Spanish Flu epidemic in 1919. (John Day, Grant County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s. 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1406d.doc-hay-lung-on.html)