Here is a pop quiz for Oregon history enthusiasts, and yes, it’s a trick question! But, humor me: What comes to your mind when I mention the name “Balch”? For most of us, it’s the sordid, nasty tale of Danford Balch, the first Portland resident to be hanged for murder,[Read More…]

Happy New Year! At the time of this writing, it’s just a few days before Anno Domini 2025 is scheduled to inflict itself upon us. This time of year, many writers make a regular practice of looking back upon the past year and writing about it. I suspect this practice[Read More…]

Far away from the Beaver State, in the backcountry of West Virginia by the Kentucky border, a man named Floyd Hatfield was the proud owner of a fine razorback hog. A distant neighbor, from across the Tug River on the Kentucky side, saw the hog one day, and claimed the[Read More…]

On June 15, 1903, a strange little article appeared in the Portland Morning Oregonian. “It is reported that a tremendous cloudburst occurred at Heppner late in the afternoon,” the article states. “All communication with that town has been cut off and nothing definite can be learned.” The silence must have[Read More…]

Sept. 1, 1962, was an unusually sultry day for the north Oregon coast, and the little beachside resort town of Seaside was crammed with high-school and college kids. They had come from all over the state and beyond for a rowdy, high-spirited end-of-summer Labor Day beach-party weekend that had become[Read More…]

It’s widely known that the first newspaper west of the Mississippi River was the short-lived Oregon Spectator, which published its first issue on Feb. 5, 1846. But that’s only true if you define “newspaper” very narrowly. In truth, there was an earlier publication that met every definition of a newspaper[Read More…]

Earlier this year, as you may remember, country music singer Zach Bryan had a few too many alcoholic beverages before pulling out his phone and opening “X,” the app formerly known as Twitter. “Eagles>Chiefs,” he tweeted tipsily. “Kanye>Taylor. Who’s with me?” It’s not clear exactly what Bryan intended — most[Read More…]

In the early 1980s, on Stark Street in Southeast Portland, there was an aging Hudson Oil Co. gas station that never seemed to get much business. It had an appearance reminiscent of a Kmart store three years ago, like a neglected outpost of a once-huge nationwide business that was slowly[Read More…]