Passengers on the speeding liner said an incompetent crew and disappearing ship's officers contributed to a shocking death toll after the liner Alaska crashed onto the rocks in the fog; the captain blamed an “uncharted current.” (Portland, Multnomah County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1512a.alaska-shipwreck-368.html)

Taken to Ocean Park after being nearly killed in the wreck of the Glenmorag, William Begg was nursed back to health by Maude Taylor - who turned out to be the love of his life. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1804b.william-begg-lucky-shipwreck-glenmorag-490.html)

Back before World War II, when racism was still a mainstream attitude with little or no social stigma attached, Portland was not a very friendly town for Black people.

It’s not that way any more, of course. There’s still racism; but the toxic race-hierarchalism that winked at lynchings and enabled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan — that, thankfully, is a distant and uncomfortable memory today.

And one has to wonder how much of that transformation — not just in Portland, but around the nation — can be attributed to the influence of one man, a man still today widely known as “The World’s Greatest Entertainer”: Sammy Davis, Jr.

Davis came to Portland with his dance group, the Will Mastin Trio — composed of Davis, his father, and his father’s best friend, Will Mastin — just after the Second World War. For a little while he was a regular in P-town’s clubs and Vaudeville theaters. ... (Portland, Multnomah County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2404d-1111d.sammy-davis-jr-portland-story-149.646.html)

THE YOUNG U.S. Cavalry captain was getting a little frustrated. He was explaining to the short, fireplug-shaped German man with the serious mouth and commanding eyes why he really, really should turn around.

It was the spring of 1855, you see, and the Oregon Trail had been going full steam for about a decade. The Sioux tribes, along with other Plains Indian tribes, had been nonplussed at first by the torrent of travelers, but by now they were really alarmed, and they had started attacking wagon trains.

The German man was Dr. Wilhelm Keil, and he was the leader of a particularly large wagon train.

Well, actually that wasn’t quite true — the man who was leading the wagon train was Dr. Keil’s 19-year-old son, Willie.

But Willie was dead. (Aurora Mills, Clackamas County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2404b-1007c.aurora-colony-willie-keil-311.644.html)

Holed up on a nearby hillside clutching a stolen shotgun, local drunken rowdy Charlie Earhart held the whole town at bay until dawn, when he finally gave himself up; surprisingly, no one was killed. (Ione, Morrow County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511d.ione-all-night-gunfight-366.html)

Abusive husband Nathaniel Lamb probably didn't really plan to kill his wife, but when he aimed his rifle at her that morning, he clearly wanted her to think he did. That night, over supper, he learned the hard way how successful he'd been. (Oregon City, Clackamas County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511e.charity-lamb-murder-367.html)

ANYONE WHO'S DONE much driving around Oregon — especially along the coast — knows the state’s bridges have a particular and distinctive style.

That style is actually hard to put your finger on, isn’t it? The bridges themselves are very different from one another. Many of them aren’t even built with the same materials. The spectacular structure that soars over Coos Bay could not be much different in size, technique, and style from the elegant little archway that links Oregon City with West Linn; but even if you’d never seen them before, you could just look at either one of them and instantly identify it as an Oregon bridge.

The common thread linking these classic Oregon bridges was Conde McCullough, the legendary bridge designer and engineer who led the teams that designed and built them. (Statewide; 1920s, 1930s, 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2407b-1111b.conde-mccullough-2of2-147.658.html)

CONDE MCCULLOUGH had a problem.

Actually, let’s restate that. The Iowa highway department, which McCullough worked for at the time (in 1914), had a problem; what McCullough had was an opportunity.

His solution to Iowa’s problem would, several years later, enable him to basically write his own ticket, and the name he would write on that ticket in the “destination” category would be “Oregon.”

But at the time, that happy day was several years in the future and was far from certain. The problem the highway department was depending on McCullough to solve for them was a big one, and success was far from assured.

The problem’s name was Daniel Luten, and he was the founder and president of the National Bridge Company. And he was a patent troll — possibly America’s first. (Corvallis, Benton County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2407a-1111b.conde-mccullough-1of2-147.657.html)

SEPT. 1, 1962, WAS an unusually sultry day for the north Oregon coast, and the little beachside resort town of Seaside was crammed with high-school and college kids.

They had come from all over the state and beyond for a rowdy, high-spirited end-of-summer Labor Day beach-party weekend that had become almost like a tradition in the postwar years.

Something was a little different this year, though. The crowd was larger than usual, for one thing. Actually, it was a lot larger. The first baby-boomers, born in 1946, were 16 years old in 1962 ... and there were a lot of them on the beach that day, and they were a bit wild.

Something else that was different that year was the attitude of the Seaside cops. They were being noticeably more hard-nosed than they had been in years past. Seaside had elected a new mayor, Maurice Pysher, a 68-year-old former heating engineer who had retired to Seaside from Portland a couple years before.

Pysher didn’t like his new town’s reputation as a place where kids could blow off steam, and he’d seen that they were getting noticeably rowdier year after year. He wanted visitors to Seaside to be quieter, more respectful, and less rambunctious. So he had fired Seaside’s longtime police chief and replaced him with someone who would be more strict and firm about keeping things orderly.

The crowds of college kids and high-school students who flocked to town for Labor Day had always been a little high-spirited, and the town’s cops had learned to strike a balance with them. They’d be there if somebody really needed help, and they’d stop any actual vandalism or other criminal activity; but they wouldn’t accost anyone on the street and hassle them for carrying an open beer, or ticket them for disorderly conduct for getting too loud around a beach bonfire.

But, not any more. Today was the start of Labor Day Weekend, 1962. The crowds were enormous, the beer was flowing freely, and the cops had a new attitude.

It wouldn’t take long for that combination to explode into something close to a worst-case scenario for the town: the first  Seaside beach-party riot. (Seaside, Clatsop County; 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2412b.seaside-riots-gidget-goes-berzerk-679.510.html)

Was the flying saucer photographed over the Trent farm near McMinnville real, or a clever hoax? Either way makes for a great story. (McMinnville, Yamhill County; 1950s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1807c.mcminnville-ufo-sighting-504.html)