ONE OF THE more interesting things about Oregon history is how much of a role “colorful characters” played in it.

Until a few dozen years ago, historians didn’t much like talking about the contributions of prostitutes, swindlers, shanghaiers and other underworld characters to Oregon’s history, preferring to talk about brave pioneers and clean-living homesteaders and noble missionaries and such.

So it’s no surprise that the name and identity of the first woman of European extraction to set foot in the Oregon territory has gone mostly unremarked. Her name was Jane Barnes, and she was, in every sense of the word, an adventuress.

That she made it into the historical record at all is a real testament to what an interesting person she must have been. (Astoria, Clatsop County; 1810s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2409e.jane-barnes-adventuress-669.507.html)

QUITE OFTEN, DURING his precious days of shore leave, lighthouse keeper James Gibbs Jr. would meet people who envied him his job. “Must be nice,” they would say, “to have such a cushy government job. Relaxing at the coast, surrounded by scenic beauty, nothing to do but trim wicks and make sure nothing breaks ….”

It’s tempting to wonder how long such critics would have lasted on Tillamook Rock Light, where Gibbs was stationed at the time.

When the lighthouse closed for good in 1957, only one person had ever been killed on it — British master mason John Trewaves, who slipped off the rock in 1879 while scouting the site for the lighthouse. But the number of people who, at some time while on the rock, sincerely believed they were about to die — that number is considerably larger. In fact, it’s probably very close to 100 percent of everyone who ever set foot on the tiny island. Conditions there were frequently terrifying. (Tillamook Rock, Clatsop County; 1920s, 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511b.storms-on-tillamook-rock-364.html)

THE EIGHT STRANGERS must have been a little puzzled when they arrived in Astoria, in the fall of 1878. They’d been brought in at considerable expense from far away by the U.S. Lighthouse Board to work on a new lighthouse construction project. But now that they were finally here, they weren’t even allowed to go into town for a drink. They were whisked away, across the river onto the lonesome wilds of the Washington Territory, and put up in an empty lightkeeper’s house at Cape Disappointment.

So, where was the lighthouse they’d been hired to work on? All they knew was that it was on a small, rocky island. But where?

More than three weeks dragged by. Finally, when the seas were relatively calm, the revenue cutter Thomas Corwin arrived to take them to the job site. And an hour or so later, their eyes widened with horror as they beheld what they’d signed up to build.

Staring at the tiny speck of granite jutting out of the flying spray and foam, the workers now understood why their employer had been so secretive — and why it had been necessary to recruit them from far-distant cities that had never heard of Tillamook Rock.... (Tillamook Rock, Clatsop County; 1870s, 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1511a.building-tillamook-rock-363.html)

ON ONE GRIM winter morning, near the end of the Second World War, a young Coast Guard seaman named James A. Gibbs, Jr., was looking apprehensively out over an angry sea from the rail of the 52-foot motor lifeboat Triumph. Far out over the field of towering pyramid-shaped waves, a tiny speck was just coming into view — his destination.

“Tillamook Rock,” the boatswain muttered, as a seasick Gibbs silently fought to hang onto his breakfast. “I wouldn’t take that duty on a bet.”

Gibbs might not have either, but he didn’t have much choice. That tiny, lonely speck in the middle of an angry gray ocean was his new duty station: Tillamook Rock, a half-acre hunk of granite with a lighthouse perched dubiously upon its crest in the middle of the open sea, known to the initiated as “Terrible Tilly.”

In his book, written many years later, Gibbs referred to Tillamook Rock as a “pint-size Alcatraz,” and indeed, his transfer there had a lot in common with a prison sentence. It was widely known that assignments to Tillamook Rock were given as a punishment for troublemakers, and Gibbs fit that profile pretty well. His record with the Coast Guard was, as he puts it, “checkered.”... (Tillamook Rock, Clatsop County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1510d.tillamook-rock-ghost-goose-362.html)

WPA writer Sara B. Wrenn's oral history interview with Portland attorney A.L. Veazie, who grew up in Polk County in the late 1800s, recalling what life was like with the Chinese laborers who were working on railroads and other worksites. Not all his recollections are flattering, but they're not super surprising given that the Chinese were nearly all young, socially ostracized peasant men in a foreign land. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001990/ )

FROM THE MID-1800s through the runup to the Second World War, lumber schooners were a familiar sight in all Oregon seaports. These were small, simple cargo ships, with shallow drafts so that they could fit across small river bars and in and out of the “doghole” ports of northern California and southern Oregon.

In many of these ports, lumber from local sawmills was actually loaded onto the ships with a block and tackle, dangling from something like a zipline, while the crew fought to hold the ship steady in the swells and breakers. And the ships, when they headed out fully loaded on their way to San Francisco or San Diego, sometimes had so little freeboard and such a tall deck load that it looked like any little wave could just swamp them or roll them over.

Starting in the late 1880s, operators started putting steam engines in lumber schooners, which made the tall masts unnecessary; by the First World War nearly the entire fleet had converted to these “steam schooners.” (Since a schooner is by definition a sailing ship, the later mast-free ones weren’t really schooners; but the name stuck.)

Steam schooners were a big improvement, particularly with respect to safety. Winds in river bars and bays are notoriously fickle, and plenty of lumber schooners ended up on the rocks when the breeze died at the last minute, or blew onto the beach when caught in a gale. Sometimes, when that happened, the sailors got lucky; and sometimes they didn’t.

All in all, it was a very dangerous way to make a living. But there was one key mitigating factor for sailors in lumber schooners: As long as they were carrying a load, they always knew their ships would never sink. The cargo would always keep them afloat.

Plenty of sailors ended up owing their lives to that fact, since one of the first things that always seemed to happen when the weather got really nasty was that the lifeboats would all get carried away by boarding seas.

Among those lucky survivors were most of the crew of the Frank W. Howe.... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1804d.frank-w-howe-lumber-schooner-shipwreck-492.html)

One of America's first known serial killers, Earle Leonard Nelson preyed on landladies, killing them while they were showing him real estate. By the time he was hanged, he'd slain at least 21 women — including four in Portland. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1309d-dark-strangler-earle-nelson.html)

The “good guy” was a petty swindler. The “wronged woman” was a prostitute and bigamist. And the “innocent victim” was a serial philanderer. By the time the “bad guy” was caught, everybody in Portland just wanted to forget the whole thing. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1509c.bradley-gittings-part2-UnLaw-357.html)

What started out looking like a clean-cut morality play, with a hero, a villain, an innocent victim and a bereaved widow — at Christmastime no less! — quickly turned into a tale of remarkable sordidness as the truth slowly emerged. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1509b.bradley-gittings-part1-UnLaw-356.html)

WPA writer William C. Haight's oral history interview with Rev. W.C. Driver, talking about his early life as a Baptist circuit preacher and the railroad chapel car — a Pullman coach kitted out as a church — that he was assigned to for 12 years. He and his wife lived in the car, and various trains would pull it from town to town. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001938/ )