Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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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 gus...
Continued From Last Week Big League Chew (1977) Baseball players, back in the day, were somewhat famous for chewing tobacco on the field. Fans would see them pull a pouch of Red Man or Beech-Nut out of their uniform pocket, dip out a big pinch, and stuff it in “between the cheek and gum.” Sometimes it would even make a visible bulge. Minor-league slugger Rob Nelson probably chewed the stuff too, although he played for the Portland Mavericks; in Portland, as in most of the Pacific Northwest, mois...
Continued From Last Week The Tater Tot (1953) As we turn our attention to what food historian Heather Arndt Anderson calls “Oregon’s prodigal spud,” we are straying into distinctly non-Christmassy territory. And yet, in the few dozen short years since brothers Golden and Neef Grigg invented it, the Tater Tot has become as much a part of American comfort food as the Velveeta-drenched macaroni noodle. It all got started just after the Second World War when Golden and Neef rented a flash...
Iconic food items invented in Oregon By Finn J.D. John At the time of this writing, the Christmas shopping season is just starting to spool up, and folks are getting ready for some serious holiday eating. Most likely, that festive feasting won’t include many of the things on this list. Although inventors from the Beaver State have had a big impact at the grocery store, most of what they’ve created would be a bit out of place at a Christmas dinner. The big exceptions are the products created by...
Lane County Historian VIII No. 2, June 1967 A special interest has been added to the finding of the Condra tree markings discovered in 1960 in the McKenzie River Valley Country, with the earth circling on February 20 by John Glenn, the first American astronaut. It is interesting to note that Glenn is a relative of the Condra who carved this record on the hemlock tree in 1867 - almost a century ago. Another occasion for this story is that the section of the tree bearing the scribing has been on...
Lane County Historian XXXVI, #1, Spring 1991 When I was a very, very young child my mother and father were operating a hotel in Blue River, mostly for the benefit of miners and people who worked at the Blue River mines. The hotel in 1909 kept my parents very busy, so at age four I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents, Samuel and Robenia Sparks, who lived in their old log homestead house about a half mile west of the community of Blue River. I think they enjoyed having me as much as I...
Continued From Last Week At one point, Oregon Trunk Railroad president John Stevens (Hill’s top lieutenant on the job) learned the Twohy Brothers had built a wagon road across a 230-acre parcel of private land to access the nearest water supply. Stevens promptly bought the land — actually, he just bought an option on it, but it came with some property rights, which gave him the right to fence it off and hang “No Trespassing” signs everywhere, and station armed guards. The Twohy Brothers complai...
Sometime in the late spring of 1909, at the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company’s ticket booth in Portland, a 19-year-old man named Jim Morrell laid down his last $2 for a ticket on the Bailey Gatzert, the famous Columbia River sternwheeler. Destination: The Dalles. Morrell was from Colorado originally; just now he was at loose ends, drifting through Portland looking for work. He thought he might find it in The Dalles. Someone had told him about a great railroad war playing out near The D...
From River Reflections May 30, 1983 Most of us have noticed fishing flies for sale somewhere here along the river. They are casually bought and sold in tackle shops, hardware stores, gas stations, restaurants, and taverns from Springfield to Sisters — thousands of them every year. Hundreds more are made and fished by individuals, who add to the pleasure and satisfaction of their sport fishing with flies of their own manufacture. Though the numbers increase yearly, the demand for professionally tied flies increases at an even greater annual r...
A wealth of memories clings around the name, “Thomson’s Lodge,” and in spite of the fact that the lodge has now passed out of the hands of the Thomson family who founded it in 1860, the name and the famous hospitality of the place will continue. One of the eldest resorts in the state to be run exclusively for sportsmen by one family, it was sold during the past week to Mr. and Mrs. Alvin P. Gannon of Portland. Dayton and Milo Thomson were the owners of the property, which was divided for the purpose of the sale. Ten acres of land, the lodge...
Continued From Last Week By Finn J.D. John The court also learned that Fieber had tried to slip away to a new piece of land beyond the county court’s jurisdiction, which he had secretly leased in Wasco County. He had already installed 13 lions and a tiger at the new place. Police figured this out when they pulled him over for a traffic stop and found a pair of lions sitting in the truck. This was another probation violation — he’d agreed not to move any of the animals. Finally, in March 1986,...
The Willamette National Forest issued a temporary closure order this week for a portion of Forest Service Road (FSR) 19 to complete a paving project to resurface the road and repair slope failures, providing safe access for those traveling the scenic roadway. The road closure order, which covers all access along FSR 19 from milepost 32 to 50.5, will be in place until Oct. 19, 2023. Access to the roadway will be open for transit on the following dates: Sunday, Oct. 8, and the following Friday through Sunday, Oct. 13-15. Forest Service Road 19,...
On the evening of Sept. 28, 1995, Woney and Laurie Peters, of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, were driving back to their home behind the local elementary school when they noticed something wasn’t right. The first thing Woney noticed was the horses. They were confined in a corral in front of the house, next to the trampoline, which his teenage kids were playing on. The kids seemed fine — but the horses seemed terrified. They kept staring up at the hillside that ran along behind the house and the sch...
Stripes may come back, but not downtown River Reflections, Volume 6, Issue 30 March 23, 1984 Yellow lines down the middle of the McKenzie Highway have been a point of conflict since the Oregon Highway Division spent $4,700 last August to sandblast off several no-passing zones. Area residents protested their removal during a 6-Year Plan hearing in Eugene as well as at a special meeting with highway officials at Leaburg in December. However, according to James Gix, Region 3 area Highway Engineer...
Continued From Last Week The accolades kept coming. She appeared on an episode of NBC’s This Is Your Life, with the legendary Ralph Edwards. Afterward, she was presented with a home in Beaverton and a new Packard automobile. She threw herself into the lecture circuit, giving speaking engagements and appearances around the country talking about her time as an American spy behind enemy lines. She even had a Hollywood movie made about her, starring Anne Dvorak, in 1951. It was called I Was an A...
Sometime in 1943, during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, a group of more than 40 officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy strolled into Club Tsubaki, an exclusive gentlemen’s club in the heart of downtown Manila. They were there for one last evening of fun while they were still in port. That very evening, they were scheduled to climb back into their submarines and set out on an extended cruise. The private party had been arranged by one of the subs’ commanders, who had struck up a fri...
AND, THAT WAS the end of it. Germany extradited Sheela to the U.S. for trial on various charges including arson, poisoning, and assault. She worked out a deal that included a few years in federal prison, from which she was released in 1988, after which she immediately married a Swiss sannyasin named Urs Birnstiel and left for Switzerland with him. Rajneesh was simply deported after receiving a prison sentence for immigration violations, suspended on condition that he leave immediately and not...
After the election, the new formerly homeless residents of Rajneeshpuram were the most pressing problem for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers. They cost a lot of money to feed and house, and they started fights and made trouble. Rajneeshee leaders started out giving them bus tickets home, but that got very expensive very fast. After all, it had cost $1 million to bring them in by busloads; sending them home one or two at a time would be many times more than that. So finally, the...
In the courtyard at the Antelope Post Office today, there stands a large bronze plaque attached to the base of a flagpole. It reads, “Dedicated to those of this community who throughout the Rajneesh invasion and occupation of 1981-1985 remained, resisted and remembered.” Most visitors probably roll their eyes at this, thinking it a bit melodramatic. Invasion? Occupation? Puh-leeze, they might mutter. But the Rajneeshee takeover of Antelope was not an anodyne bureaucratic exercise. To those who...
Part Two: Arrival On June 1, 1981, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh boarded a Boeing 747 for a flight from Mumbai to New York City. Officially the trip was for medical treatment, and authorities were told he’d be heading back home to India afterward. But Rajneesh was not planning on returning. His movement, which had already become an international octopus with meditation centers in dozens of different countries around the world, had outgrown the Pune campus. He needed a new World Headquarters. And his ne...
By Finn J.D. John Part One of Five: Inception Once upon a time in India, a man lived. He would go on to become one of the most influential thinkers in new-age thought, but at this time — the early 1960s — he was merely a philosophy teacher, and one of the thousands of gurus living and discoursing in that land of gurus. His name was Chandra Mohan Jain. But even then, just a few years out of graduate school, Jain was different. To call him charismatic would be a colossal understatement. By all...
Step four in a dream - A true public library River Reflections, Volume 6, Issue 26 February 24, 1984 By Jacquie Long From a few stacks of books in her living room to shelves in a small brown shack, and finally, to a large two-room collection, Mrs. O’Brien’s Blue River Library continues to grow and is now known nationally. Mrs. O’Brien and her husband, Orel, saw the need for a library in the McKenzie River area more than a decade ago. They began their dream of building one in 1970. After Mr. O...
When we first went to a camp above Wendling we lived in a tent house. My dad built a floor and sideboards about four feet high and then put this big tent on top of it. We lived in that for the first year. Dad worked for the section gang. They built the railroads, and then when the camp was moved they tore them up. We moved to Camp 29, which was on the east side of Mt. Nebo. They were almost through with that logging site, so then we moved clear around to the northwest side of the mountain. We...
The Willamette Meteorite is the most famous heavenly body to end up in Oregon, but it’s far from the only one. Here are some of the others: Sams Valley Meteorite, Jackson County: 1880s and 1890s The area of Sams Valley, about 10 miles north of Medford, apparently was the target of a meteorite that broke up on entry into the atmosphere. There have been roughly half a dozen pieces of it found over the years, including three found in the 1880s by a gold panner, a 15-pound metallic lunker found i...
It was getting toward the end of the summer of 1902, and West Linn resident Ellis Hughes was getting worried. His neighbor, William Dale, had traveled back to Eastern Oregon to sell some land he owned there. With the proceeds, Dale and Hughes planned to buy a piece of property next to the Hughes farm. The property belonged to the Oregon Iron and Steel Co., which wasn’t really doing anything with it and which Hughes was pretty sure would be happy to sell … unless, of course, they found out why...
