Legendary Crown Point Vista House looks out over the Columbia River and was the highlight of the Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway — built when roadbuilding was as much an art as a science. (Crown Point, Multnomah County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1012b-crown-point-vista-house-marble-rest-area.html)

Stranded for the winter on Sauvie Island, the members of Nathaniel Wyeth's trading post struggled to get enough to eat. But for some of them, the greater problem was finding something to drink. (Sauvie Island, Multnomah and Columbia County; 1830s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1707d.townsend-lizard-liquor-453.html)

Two of them had movies made about their wartime exploits — “30 Seconds over Tokyo” and “The Great Escape”; a third, captured and imprisoned in the raid, returned to Japan after the war as a Christian missionary. (Pendleton, Umatilla County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1505a.part3-doolittles-pendleton-raiders-337.html)

Robert S. Clever, Everett “Brick” Holstrom, Henry “Hank” Potter and Robert G. Emmens were four Oregon aviators who did the Beaver State proud in what seemed like a suicide mission over enemy territory. (Pendleton, Umatilla County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1504d.part2-doolittles-pendleton-raiders-336.html)

Oregon played a vital role in America's answer to Pearl Harbor — the daring daylight airstrike on Tokyo and other Japanese cities that provided a much-needed morale boost during the dark days of 1942. (Pendleton, Umatilla County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1504c.part1-doolittles-pendleton-raiders.335.html)

The “Genius of Corvallis” hoped his cattle-powered riverboat would give the upper-Willamette sternwheelers a run for their money; and so it did, so long as it didn't try to go upstream... (Corvallis, Benton County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1706c.cow-powered-riverboat-hay-burner-448.html)

Original owners of the falls tried for years to log it, but the steamship and railroad moguls were making a lot of money on excursion trips, so they blocked the scheme, preserving the falls for today's park. (Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1707e.fight-for-multnomah-falls-454.html)

BY THE TIME Walt Disney Productions released “The Rescuers” in 1977, the idea of a “Rescue Aid Society” dedicated to the eradication of kidnapping felt quaint, old-fashioned, and fun.

But not many years earlier, when memories of the Progressive Era were fresher, it would not have scanned that way. In fact, “The Rescuers” was first pitched in 1962, at which time Walt Disney himself killed it. And that was probably a good call: members of the real Aid Societies were still alive and had matured into one of the fiercest and most serious cohorts of old ladies the world had ever known. A cartoon that seemed to poke fun at the great accomplishments of their younger lives, even gentle and good-natured fun, would have brought them out of retirement ready for battle.

And Walt knew what they were capable of — he had been there in those Aid Society ladies’ heyday. And he’d been working in show business — one of the industries they regularly locked horns with.

No, “The Rescuers” would not come out in 1962. It would have to wait until every society lady who in her youth had made it her life’s work to stamp out “white slavery” was gone, along with Disney himself, before it could be safely made.

For that was what the Aid Societies were about. They weren’t dedicated to finding and rescuing little orphan kids who had been kidnapped by evil flame-haired swamp witches to steal diamonds. They were anti-human-trafficking organizations.

And one of their most prominent and effective members was a Portland woman named Lola Greene Baldwin, known to history as the first paid female police officer west of the Rockies. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-06.lola-baldwin-municipal-mother-622.html)

Warm Springs Indians struggled from 1871 to 1972 to get back a piece of land taken as a result of a survey everyone admitted was in error. (Warm Springs Reservation, Umatilla County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1002c_McQuinnStrip.html)

The movie was 'The General,' starring Buster Keaton; in the scene, a real locomotive is crashed through a real burning bridge into the river, at a cost (in 2010 dollars) of more than half a million dollars. (Cottage Grove, Lane County; 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1002b_TheGeneral.html)