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Palatial riverboat caught in hurricane on open sea
Designed for calm inland waterways, the sidewheel steamboat Alaskan was no match for the massive late-spring gale that pounced on it off Cape Blanco …
5 months ago
Drunk looting party broke out at scene of shipwreck
ON THE MORNING OF NOV. 5, 1915, at the back of the entrance to Coos Bay, a big steamship could be seen towering improbably over the beach, stuck fast…
5 months ago
Civil War plotters hoped to get West Coast to secede
Dreamed up by supporters of the old south, the plan envisioned an independent “Pacific Republic” as a slave state — to be stocked with slaves by a so…
5 months ago
Buster Keaton brought Hollywood to Cottage Grove (Part 2 of 2)
And then there was the climactic scene, which is the main thing people talk about in South Lane County when this movie comes up. It was literally a t…
5 months ago
Buster Keaton brought Hollywood to Cottage Grove (Part 1 of 2)
IF A COTTAGE Grove logger had been bonked on the head in January 1926, and woke up six months later, he would have scarcely recognized his home town.…
5 months ago
Prohibition sting ended with a deadly gunfight
IF YOU LOOK UP Prohibition Agent Glenn H. Price on the “Fallen Agents” page at www.atf.gov, you’ll get a very brief account of his death: “Prohibitio…
5 months, 1 week ago
Town’s emergency wood money is still legal tender
IN EARLY FEBRUARY of 1933, the mayor and city council of North Bend had a big problem on their hands. It was, of course, the depths of the Great Depr…
5 months, 1 week ago
Bunny-massacre parties were big social events
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re passing through a little Harney County town when you see, in a used-car lot, a DMC DeLorean that someone has modif…
5 months, 1 week ago
Corvallis man found cows make lousy boat engines
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 l…
5 months, 1 week ago
Alcoholic shipmate drank snake-preserving whiskey
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 gre…
5 months, 1 week ago