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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 Virgil W. Earp. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2401c-1009d_virgil-earp-090.631.html)

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)

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)

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 too many lawyers in Portland in 1868. Fresh out of law school, with no social connections, Sam just didn’t have a chance.

But finally the door did open, and somebody stepped inside.

It wasn’t a client, though. It was one of the other residents in the boardinghouse he was staying in, a greenhorn from Chicago named Ted Harper. And Harper had a proposition: He wanted Sam to close up his law office and come to Southern Oregon with him. They would spend the summer hunting for a certain ruined cabin with an immense hoard of gold buried inside, deep in the wilderness south of Jacksonville, in a hidden valley boxed in by steep cliffs.

Only problem was, Harper didn’t know exactly where the valley was. It was possible that they’d search all summer and get nothing for their pains.

But Harper did have a letter giving partial directions to the cabin, which his cousin — who'd built the cabin and buried the gold — had dropped dead in the middle of writing.

Simpson agreed to the scheme. He was brand new in the law business, had no clients and very few prospects; a summer in the woods, a possible fortune – sure, why not? (Siskiyou Mountains, Josephine County; 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-05b.sam-simpson-lost-cabin-gold.html)

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 https://offbeatoregon.com/20-05.sam-simpson-lost-cabin-gold.html)