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

After Columbia Lightship broke its lines and drifted ashore, the salvage bid was won by a house-moving company from Portland — which, rather than trying to pull the stranded ship off the beach, built a road, trucked it over the peninsula, and launched it in Baker Bay. (Columbia River Bar, Clatsop County; 1890s, 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1710a.lightship-saved-by-house-movers-463.html)

WPA writer William C. Haight's oral history interview with a fascinating fortune-teller he identified only as 'Miss Smith,' in her tea-room business in Portland's Carlton Hotel. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001945/ )

On any list of Oregon “firsts,” there’s one name that almost never pops up - Dr. Adaline M. Weed.

Which is understandable, because although Dr. Weed was the first female physician in the Oregon Territory, she was not a “regular” doctor – she was a hydropathist, a practitioner of “water cure.” Maybe that's why, today, when asked who the Oregon Territory’s first female physician was, most people who think they know the answer (including, until just last week, me!) will say, “Bethenia Owens-Adair, in 1874” — and be wrong. (Salem, Marion County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912c.dr-adeline-weed.html)

Sent downstairs to fetch a pan of powdered milk, a kitchen assistant at the Oregon State Hospital dipped his scoop into the wrong bin — and brought back six pounds of roach poison. It was mixed into the eggs and fed to 467 people. (Salem, Marion County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1211c-asylum-kitchen-mixup-killed-hundreds-with-scrambled-eggs.html)

She had a record of uninhibited and acerbic writing; she was preparing what appeared to be a super-racy tell-all memoir; and she had just secured a divorce from a prominent community member about whom they’d all heard some pretty tantalizing rumors. What was not to like? (French Prairie, Marion County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909d.margaret-bailey-oregons-first-authoress-2of2-566.html)

MARGARET JEWETT BAILEY WAS not only Oregon’s first author of novel-length fiction, she was also the West Coast’s first published female author, and its first female newspaper journalist. She was also one of the most colorful characters of a remarkably colorful age. She could be absolutely savage when she felt the situation called for it ... and, in fairness, it has to be admitted that her situation seemed to call for it rather a lot. (French Prairie, Marion County; 1850s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909c.margaret-bailey-oregons-first-authoress-1of2-565.html)