... and smuggling routes through Portland were supplying the entire West Coast with the exotic, deadly stuff. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1402a.opium-culture-portland-urban-underworld.html)

... and the motives of the killer were uglier and more sordid than anyone had thought possible. (Brownsville, Linn County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1708d.sidney-barbara-smith-murders-458.html)

... the discovery was made just a few days too late. (Sauvie Island, Columbia and Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1207e-rusty-lifeboat-turned-out-to-be-relic-of-second-world-war.html)

... with a woman officials thought was his fiancee. (Salem, Marion County; 1974) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1207c-carl-cletus-bowles-jailbreak-during-conjugal-visit.html)

Each Tuesday we have a reading from a particularly interesting historical item. Sometimes it's a historical tidbit that wasn't quite beefy enough to make a full column out of; other times, an especially interesting old newspaper article; frequently it's a short story from one of the frontier literary magazines that thrived in Oregon at the end of the 19th century.

Today it's an excerpt from a short book, first printed in 1922, titled 'Sensational Escapes from the Oregon State Penitentiary,' by an inmate in the Oregon State Prison who identifies himself only as 'Prisoner No. 6435,' telling the story of the bloody prison breakout of the outlaw Harry Tracy, along with an equally bloody weeks-long manhunt for him as he made his way up to Washington en route to Hole-in-the-Wall outlaw country. You can find Prisoner No. 6435's book for free on the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/sensationalpriso00pris .

It was a near thing, but he pulled it off. (Mt. Angel, Marion County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1505c.adelhelm-odermatt-mt-angel-abbey-339.html)

Come to think of it, it’s been very difficult to get away from that song ever since Croce wrote it. You probably are humming it to yourself right now: “Bad, bad Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town. Badder than old King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog.”

The little Cascade-foothills town of Boring once had its own Bad, Bad Leroy Brown — although when the song came out, very few people then alive were old enough to remember him. His name was Free Coldwell — or at least, that was what he called himself. Like Leroy Brown, he a proud, strutting tough guy who got a humiliating comeuppance. But his downfall didn’t come from making a pass at “the wife of a jealous man” in a Boring nightclub or bar. No; Free Coldwell was taken down by the citizens of Boring, who basically played an elaborate practical joke on him — with the help of a professional prizefighter. (Boring, Clackamas County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/21-05.bad-bad-free-coldwell-baddest-boxer-in-boring.html)

Their schemes for leaving the jailhouse behind included a tunneling scheme right out of “Shawshank.” (Salem, Marion County; 1890s, 1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1207d-safecrackers-were-good-at-jailbreaks.html)

They never found the gold, though; could it be that it's still out there somewhere? (Crater Lake, Klamath County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1207b-crater-lake-discovered-by-legendary-gold-mine-seekers.html)

Each Tuesday we have a reading from a particularly interesting historical item. Sometimes it's a historical tidbit that wasn't quite beefy enough to make a full column out of; other times, an especially interesting old newspaper article; frequently it's a short story from one of the frontier literary magazines that thrived in Oregon at the end of the 19th century.

Today it's one of the best Stewart Holbrook stories about the old days in the Pacific Northwest logging camps: "Fire in the Bush". It was first published in the September 1926 issue of The Century magazine, which you can find online at https://www.unz.com/print/Century-1926sep-00572/