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 a Dec. 9, 1938, interview with William Huntley Hampton, a 73-year-old retired mining engineer, inventor, and mineralogist, who actually invented and patented the petroleum-extraction method we know today as 'fracking.' Hampton was the son of Brigham Young, although he was not a Mormon; and he led a very interesting and productive life. To read the source documents from this interview, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001957/