12 min
Decade-long dam dispute resolved with dynamite (Episode for Friday, March 22) Offbeat Oregon History podcast
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- History
IN THE SMALL hours of the morning of Aug. 16, 1906, a powerful explosion jolted residents awake near the little town of Willamette, which today is a neighborhood of West Linn. It came from the direction of the nearby Tualatin River.
The cause was soon discovered. When the first rays of the morning sun fell on the Oregon Iron and Steel Co.’s diversion dam, located a little over three miles from the river’s mouth, a 20-foot-wide hole had been blasted in its center. The river water was still gushing through it.
Executives of the Oregon Iron and Steel Co. were outraged. In newspaper interviews the next day, they pledged that the dam would be speedily rebuilt, and for weeks afterward newspapers like the Hillsboro Argus and the Oregon City Enterprise ran advertisements from the company offering a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever blew it up.
They also fanned out around the neighborhood of farmers and residents along the Tualatin River upstream from the dam, making the same offer. But nobody seemed to know anything. Most of the residents wouldn’t even admit to having heard the blast.
They all knew, of course. Some of them had been in the party that had crept up to the dam in the pre-dawn darkness, set the charge, and touched it off.... (Lake Oswego, Clackamas County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-01.tualatin-dam-dynamited.html)
IN THE SMALL hours of the morning of Aug. 16, 1906, a powerful explosion jolted residents awake near the little town of Willamette, which today is a neighborhood of West Linn. It came from the direction of the nearby Tualatin River.
The cause was soon discovered. When the first rays of the morning sun fell on the Oregon Iron and Steel Co.’s diversion dam, located a little over three miles from the river’s mouth, a 20-foot-wide hole had been blasted in its center. The river water was still gushing through it.
Executives of the Oregon Iron and Steel Co. were outraged. In newspaper interviews the next day, they pledged that the dam would be speedily rebuilt, and for weeks afterward newspapers like the Hillsboro Argus and the Oregon City Enterprise ran advertisements from the company offering a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever blew it up.
They also fanned out around the neighborhood of farmers and residents along the Tualatin River upstream from the dam, making the same offer. But nobody seemed to know anything. Most of the residents wouldn’t even admit to having heard the blast.
They all knew, of course. Some of them had been in the party that had crept up to the dam in the pre-dawn darkness, set the charge, and touched it off.... (Lake Oswego, Clackamas County; 1900s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/24-01.tualatin-dam-dynamited.html)
12 min