Offbeat Oregon History podcast

Listen, download, subscribe

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Town destroyed by its founder’s favorite garden shrub

Gorse reminded Irishman Lord George Bennett of home, so he planted it when he founded the Oregon seaside town of Bandon; years later, the gorse destroyed the city in a fiery cataclysm. (Bandon, Coos County; 1930s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1011d-bandon-founder-favorite-plant-destroyed-his-town.html)

• 

  How a national mythology was made from massacre

• 

  Marcus Whitman: The man behind the myths and the massacre

• 

  Portland home of world’s only working P.T. boat

• 

  After logger’s murder, bordello madam vanished

• 

  Cayuse tribe’s amazing ponies are now very rare

• 

  Famous dance hall hosted Berry, Cash, many more

• 

  The notorious Tusko led a colorful and tragic life

• 

  Lotus Isle, Oregon’s most surreal amusement park

• 

  Pirates were defeated in Yaquina Bay Oyster Wars

• 

  NASA’s ‘Moon Trees’ have roots in Oregon forest fire

• 

  ‘Rajneesh’ or ‘Osho’? In Oregon, his name is mud (Part 4 of 4)

• 

  Rajneeshees’ doom sealed by scheme to seize power (Part 3 of 4)

• 

  Rajneeshees got on well with neighbors ... at first (Part 2 of 4)

• 

  Rajneeshpuram: Oregon’s most (in)famous ashram (Part 1 of 4)

• 

  Opium culture a forgotten part of urban underworld

• 

  The ex-Oregonian who got the U.S. into World War II: Yosuke Matsuoka (#6 o…