A well-used bridge across the Illinois River south of Cave Junction near Takilma, Ore., was blown up around the turn of the 20 th century by a Josephine county commissioner who unilaterally declared it unsafe.

The old National Guard Armory on Main Street in Klamath Falls, Ore., held hundreds of boxing matches. One claimed the life of a young Native American fighter known throughout the Northwest.

Explorer Jedediah Smith and his travelling companions nearly starved during the first documented land journey of American explorers up the California coast to Oregon in June of 1828.

More than 2,000 mouths chomped down on the world’s largest pear pie at the 1936 Pear and Tomato Festival in Talent, Ore. Festival-goers consumed it in the evening after admiring it all day as the fair’s central attraction.

A superabundance of “Medford (distilled) spirit” was blamed for several phony searches for illegally caught fish near Grants Pass in 1913.

In 1965, a 22-year-old student, Diane Newell Meyer, joined an anti-war rally at the University of Oregon. She had written a slogan on an envelope and attached it to her sweater.

Rafters and hikers going down the wild and scenic portion of the Rogue River near the old mining town of Marial pass by a bright red farmhouse with a green lawn and gardens.

Until 1859, foot trails were the only way in and out of Siskiyou County, Calif. Regional tribes, including the Shasta, Karuk, Modoc, Pit, and Wintu, had forged the trails, with the exception of some opened by the Hudson’s Bay Co.

During the Civil War, the Army sent four cannons to Oregon, one of them to Jacksonville. It never fired in a war, but figured often at Fourth of July celebrations in Jacksonville, Ore., and the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Civil War Veterans, took it to their annual encampments.

Fred Colvin bought the Gold Beach Confectionary during Prohibition in 1921, so he sold soft drinks and near-beer, but no alcohol. But according to his 8-year-old son at the time, Edsel Colvin, Prohibition didn’t stop anybody from buying moonshine.