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

WPA writer Walker Winslow's oral history interview with William Huntley Hampton, a son of Brigham Young although not a Mormon, who was probably Oregon's second most famous mining engineer around the turn of the Twentieth Century (behind Herbert Hoover). He invented the process of hydraulic fracking, worked for the Bureau of Mines for years, and was one of the preeminent authorities on gold mining. (For the transcript, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001957/)

On the morning of Nov. 25, 1881, two men were walking to work along the North End waterfront when they saw something incongruous in the river, just off the foot of Everett Street ... a pair of feet, sticking straight up into the air. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1990s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1910a.carrie-bradley-2of2.html)

The Femme Fatale, like most really satisfying tropes in fiction, is based on real life. And arguably, the closest Oregon has ever come to a real-life femme fatale worthy of Hammett’s pen was in early 1880s Portland, in what today is known as the Tenderloin — in the person of a gorgeous, hard-eyed 28-year-old brunette who called herself Carrie Bradley. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1882) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1909e.carrie-bradley-femme-fatale-1of2-567.html)

In a race with Portland neophile Henry Wemme to be the first owner of an airplane in Oregon, Cornell-educated John Burkhart was two weeks too late; but unlike Wemme, he designed, built and flew his own machine. (Albany, Linn County; 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1410d.310.burkhart-aviation-pioneer.html)

The geographical evidence isn't there; but every nearby Indian community has legends about the river tunneling underground for miles, and roughly similar accounts of the tunnel's collapse. What are the odds? (Near The Dalles, Wasco County; circa 1450 A.D.) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1907c.bridge-of-the-gods-legend-and-truth.html)

Young Charley Imus was the son of the local undertaker, and he and a school friend were tasked with watching over a corpse while an Irish wake was going on, as the wind howled in the shingles on a stormy, spooky night. Imagine the boys' consternation when the 'corpse' ... woke up. Apparently the wake worked! (Interview conducted on Feb. 24, 1939. For the source documents, see https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001939/)