Offbeat Oregon History podcast

WHEN CHERRY SEASON rolls around, there’s never much doubt about what varieties you’ll find in your local grocery store. They’ll usually have some white or blush cherries, typically Royal Anne or Rainier; but most of them will be Bings. Among cherry fans, the deep-red Bing is the gold standard, and has been for well over 100 years now. Rich and sweet, almost like chocolate in its intensity of flavor, the Bing dominates the supermarket and is most people’s favorite variety. And there is probably no single fruit that’s more closely associated with the state of Oregon than this heavenly cherry, the ancestors of which actually crossed the Oregon Trail and may have saved its fellow travelers on the wagon train from harm at the hands of some fed-up Indian tribes along the way. For all of that, we mostly have three fruit-growing brothers to thank: Henderson Luelling, and his younger brothers John and Seth. ... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2410a1001b_luelling-oregon-trail-story-670.056.html)

Hopping on an old steel one-speed and pedaling 30 miles, then mowing a half-acre of lawn with a push mower, chopping down an oak tree twice, and riding 30 miles back again — it was all in a weekend's work for Gov. T.T. Geer. (Champoeg, Marion County; 1890s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1706a.governor-geer-bicycles-to-champoeg-446.html)

The armed men who apparently came to rob and kill the travelers helped pull them over the summit of McKenzie pass instead - after discovering there were six children in the wagon. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1002a_Robbers.html)

'Diamond Bill' Barrett earned his nickname by sweet-talking a jewelry store into letting him borrow a $55,000 diamond, which he promptly hocked. Later, he deployed that legendary charm to sweet-talk two heiresses into marrying him, then disappeared with showgirl-turned-trophy-wife Sidi Wirt Spreckels' $100,000 string of pearls. But the mystery remains: Did he really steal Sidi's pearls ... or did he fence them for her? (Hillsboro, Washington County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1905c.diamond-bill-barrett-heiress-whisperer-548.html)

At the critical moment, the keeper of the rescue station at Cape Arago lost his nerve and deserted his waiting crew. Eleven shipwrecked sailors drowned while he huddled behind the warm stove in his cabin. (Cape Arago, Coos County; 1880s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1905b.lighthouse-keeper-cowardice-547.html)

ABOUT 20 YEARS ago, Alex Hirsch, a student at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, set out to make a low-budget short animated film that he hoped would become a demo reel one day. It was called “Gravity Falls” … you have perhaps heard of it, yes? Hirsch used the 11-minute reel to pitch Disney on his show, and they snapped it up. To say it was a success is to understate things quite a bit; when it debuted in 2012 the show was probably the biggest new thing on The Disney Channel that year. Gravity Falls is the adventures and misadventures of a pair of 12-year-old fraternal twins who are sent off to spend the summer with their great-uncle Stan, who has converted his A-frame cabin deep in the backwoods of Oregon into a tourist trap that he calls “The Mystery Shack.” The inspiration for the show, Hirch told reporters, was the “mystery” type roadside attractions that he used to visit with his family when he and his twin sister were young. Places like “The Mystery Spot,” a short distance from his home in the San Francisco Bay area — and the attraction that inspired The Mystery Spot: The Oregon Vortex and House of Mystery, near the town of Gold Hill. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2510a1002d.oregon-vortex-keeps-experts-guessing-709.063.html)

HALFWAY THROUGH HIS second term in office, Governor Chamberlain ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate, and won the election. So he resigned his office as governor in favor of his Secretary of State, Frank W. Benson, and prepared to board an eastbound train to take his new seat. There was a problem, though.... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-04.caralyn-shelton-first-woman-guv-620.html)

IF YOU ASK most Oregonians who the first woman governor in state history was, they’ll have an immediate answer … but they’ll be wrong. Conventional wisdom holds that the first woman to take the gubernatorial purple in the Beaver State was Barbara Roberts, who was elected to the job in 1990. In fact, that’s almost true … but, of course, “almost” doesn’t work very well as an answer to a true-or-false question. The truth is, Barbara Roberts was the first elected woman governor in Oregon history. But the first woman to serve as governor of Oregon — or any other state, for that matter — was a remarkable woman named Caralyn B. Shelton. It was because of Caralyn Shelton that Oregon, for one historic weekend in early 1909, became the first and only state in the nation with a female governor. This was especially ironic because it wasn’t until 1912 that women won the right to vote in Oregon. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-04.caralyn-shelton-first-woman-guv-620.html)

Happily ensconced in their little bubble of like-minded businessmen and politicians, the land thieves had gotten to be a bit out of touch with how their activities were playing with the public. As the new century dawned, the old “greed is good” ethos of the Gilded Age was wearing very thin. Members of the public, watching fat cats from out of state (or even out of country) take advantage of the situation to build vast absentee empires, were starting to notice, and resent. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-01.land-fraud-trials-617.html)

ON THE MORNING of Dec. 7, 1904, Stephen A.D. Puter had just arrived at the office of U.S. Marshal Jack Matthews. He was expecting some friends to come by … and bail him out of jail. Puter had just been convicted of masterminding a plan to swindle the U.S. government out of thousands of acres of prime timberlands. He had not yet been sentenced. Like all convicts, he had the option of either staying in jail until sentencing, or posting bail. In his case, bail was set at $4,000. He figured his friends — or, rather, unindicted co-conspirators — would be by shortly to help him raise the funds. No one came. It was starting to dawn on Puter that no one was going to come. He now realized he was to be sacrificed to appease the gods in Washington D.C. He was to be thrown under the bus, branded a “bad apple” and socially disowned in order to protect the bigger fish involved and enable them to keep the good times rolling. And how much bigger were those bigger fish? Well, several of them were out-of-state millionaires; two of them were members of the U.S. House of Representatives; and one was United States Senator John H. Mitchell. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-01.land-fraud-trials-617.html)

LATE IN THE MONTH of March, 1948, in the small coastal town of Gearhart, Pauline Virgin, 12, and her cousin Navarre Smith, 14, were listening to the famous “Gang Busters” radio program on radio station KEX (A.M. 1190). The radio host was telling the story of a wanted criminal named John Harvey Bugg, who back in 1945 had kidnapped a county sheriff, robbed him, and tied him to a telephone pole. Listeners were urged to be on the lookout for a man who walked with a limp, loved horses, and had the word “LOVE” tattooed across the knuckles of his left hand. “Why — that’s Cowboy Jim!” Pauline exclaimed. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/21-01.cowboy-jim-and-painter-ken-FBI-most-wanted.html)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! In the spirit of the American tradition of the season, today we’re going to explore the stories of two Missouri men whose New Year’s Resolutions probably once included “Give up crime” and “Hide from the F.B.I.” This is the sort of thing that used to be very easy to do in Oregon, which is actually the only state (so far as I have been able to learn) to have ever had one of its U.S. Senators serve under an alias which he adopted while running from law enforcement. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/21-01.cowboy-jim-and-painter-ken-FBI-most-wanted.html)

The motto of Kate Ann Williams' cult was “Pray and be Cured,” and adherents went on rigorous 40-day fasts that occasionally killed them. The cult disappeared after its leader, who was Mayor George Williams' wife, starved herself to death. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1204d-kate-williams-starvation-cult.html)

Senate committee went from a solid consensus to confirm George H. Williams, to a firm determination not to, in just one week. The cause? Most believed it was because of the arrogant attitude of Mrs. Williams toward the senators' wives. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1204c-williams-scotus-confirmation-scotched-by-wife.html)

Today known properly as Yaquina Head Light, the state's tallest lighthouse is a popular tourist attraction, and until recently was the home of the nation's only wheelchair-accessible tidepools. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1706b.yaquina-head-light-should-have-been-cape-foulweather-light-447.html)

Police figured out who the body snatchers were before they even had time to think about writing a ransom note — so their sentences were much lighter than they would have been if they'd had time to add extortion to the rap. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-03.body-snatchers-resurrected-william-ladd-619.html)

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY was a kind of golden age of body snatching. Digging up the freshly dead to cash the corpse in at the back door of a nearby medical school was — well, not common exactly, but far from unheard-of. So when, around the middle of May 1897, Daniel Magone and Charles Montgomery asked a 20-year-old wood hauler named William Rector to help them steal a corpse out of River View Cemetery, Rector didn’t react the way you or I would. A job was a job, and Rector needed the work, and although it was technically illegal, one couldn’t really get into too much trouble for it … provided, of course, that the corpse being snatched belonged to a poor person. Body snatching as it was practiced back then was an ancillary industry to the medical profession. Medical colleges needed a constant supply of cadavers to dissect in their labs, and there were never enough available through legitimate sources to slake the demand. Well, nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a market; so, an underground industry of body-snatchers, also called “resurrection men,” developed to meet the demand for fresh corpses, by stealing them out of cemeteries in the middle of the night.... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-03.body-snatchers-resurrected-william-ladd-619.html)

Before Oregon was even a state, its territorial government outlawed all booze. Why? It all has to do with a fellow who could probably be called the true founder of the city of Portland — and his ever-bubbling moonshine still. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1311d-blue-ruin-whiskey-sparks-oregons-first-prohibition.html)

BY THE TIME George Graham Rice met Larry Sullivan at Sullivan and Grant’s “palace” in Goldfield, he was doing a booming business in Nevada as the owner and copywriter of an advertising agency, working with the local mine owners. He provided a full-service kind of operation — not only placing ads for investors, but also sending out hundreds of fake “human interest” stories about life in the mining camps for East Coast and West Coast newspapers to run. These articles were basically dime-novel narratives of feuds and gunfights and gold strikes and virtuous-maiden-rescuings and all the other wild-West story tropes; and, of course, they prominently featured Rice’s clients in heroic roles. They were eagerly run by newspapers all over the country, and were very popular with readers. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-09.larry-sullivan-goldfield-swindles.html)

For anyone interested in the shanghaiing of sailors on the old Portland waterfront, the name “Larry Sullivan” needs no introduction. Smooth, polished, well-connected and ruthless, Larry Sullivan was essentially the Boss Tweed of the Portland waterfront from the early 1890s right up to the moment the music stopped. But in 1904, as the upcoming Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition drew near, a reforming spirit was in the Portland air. Thousands of visitors were about to come to Portland and see it for the first time, and the city’s underworld was far too much on public display for that to go well if changes were not made. Larry Sullivan *was* the Portland underworld, and he had good enough political instincts to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Selling his stake in the Portland Club, his gambling house, to fellow underworld tycoon Nate Solomon and closing the doors on his sailors’ boardinghouse, Larry packed up and headed east, looking for fresh fields of endeavor. And, in a rip-roaring Nevada mining boomtown called Goldfield, he found what he was looking for. And it was at The Palace that Larry met one of the most colorful and rascally characters in the history of American con-artistry: George Graham Rice. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-09.larry-sullivan-goldfield-swindles.html)