Offbeat Oregon History podcast www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com)

The gregarious young entrepreneur usually cleared $2,500 – that’s the equivalent of $57,000 in modern currency – on each county fair. His profit margin hovered around 92 percent. How did he do it? By selling cheap cigars — wrapped in an expensive story. (Portland, Multnomah and Washington County; 1870s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912a.abe-tichner-frontier-portland-hustler.html)

John Hipple dumped his family, changed his name and moved West. A dozen years and a few easy-money real-estate swindles later, he was a hugely successful railroad-and-timber lawyer and a U.S. Senator. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1880s, 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1210e-john-mitchell-oregons-snidely-whiplash.html)

Sure, most people speak English. But there’s an older language whose roots run far deeper in Oregon’s culture and history, and it’s one that nearly every Oregonian knows a word or two of. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1411d.314.chinook-jargon.html)

It was a notoriously difficult climb, especially on the descent; but the 'idiots climbing Haystack Rock' dynamic didn't become a serious issue until after the helicopter was invented, and climbers started demanding that they be rescued. When they were, the propwash blew all the baby birds out of their nests and into the sea ... something had to be done — so, something was. (Cannon Beach, Clatsop County; 1950s, 1960s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1908d.haystack-rock-climbers-required-constant-rescue-562.html)

'When I asked Miss Spencer about her ancestors she exhibited a tree full of monkeys and said that they were the first one," writes WPA writer Walker Winslow in his oral history interview with Nettie Spencer, which he conducted in 1938 — a little over a decade after the famous 'Scopes Monkey Trial.' Spencer went on to give a wonderful description of frontier life in the Willamette Valley in the years after the Civil War. (For the transcript, see www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001960/ )

The history of Portland mayors in the 20th century largely comes down to the story of the struggle of progressive reformers against various forms of corruption and vice. Put that way, it sounds like a clean morality play: good vs. evil. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1911d.portland-mayors-part3of3.html)