Richard “Dick” Engeman at his printing press On the night of November 24, 2010, Sunnymead burned to the ground. My most memorable childhood home, it was also the historic farmhouse of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair (1840-1926), Oregon’s first woman medical doctor. Longtime owner and resident Dick Mattson and one of his two dogs escaped; the house is…
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Amateurs carving, ca. 1940 ‘Tis the season of the turkey. For several decades, Oregon was a noted producer of turkeys for the table, and a notable place for the developing of meatier birds. At one point 30% of the West Coast’s turkeys were grown in Oregon, and they were prized for their high quality. Large…
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Seaside brochure, ca. 1922 “Cool in Summer. Warm in Winter.” This brochure, issued about 1922, has a distinct California aura about it, with the faintly Cal-Mediterranean hostelry (the Moore Hotel looked somewhat similar to this) and the snow-capped mountain peaks. Orange, purple, green; parasols, bathing caps, blanket-covered knees. It’s a charming picture. It’s just not…
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Restaurant and hotel, ca. 1925 When you were young, did you sit on a sofa in your family’s living room, or did you call it a davenport, or a couch? Maybe the sofa was in a den, or a family room, or a conversation pit, where people sort of sprawled and talked? Surely you didn’t have…
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It doesn’t look terribly dramatic. But it was a traumatic event. On May 12, 1917, a mixed* train of the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company tumbled from a bridge over flooded Willow Creek near Ione in Morrow County. Engineer Ulysses Hanson (or Hansen) and J. Wyman (or Haybelt — accounts differ) , a maintenance foreman,…
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The Oregon Historical Society has a substantial, but temporary, new revenue source, thanks to the recent vote of Multnomah County voters. I voted for the levy, but I did so with many misgivings. First: for the past decade, the Society has strenuously avoided telling its membership, and the state legislature, and the general public, just…
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Grants Pass was optimistic in the 1920s. The creation of the Oregon Caves National Monument in 1909 gave an early boost to tourism, as did the completion of the Pacific Highway in the mid-1910s. In 1922 Grants Pass businessmen constituted themselves as the Cavemen to promote the city. The six-story Redwoods Hotel was opened…
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This 34-page booklet was published about 1892, written by a prolific publicist of the West, one Patrick Donan. “The Peerless Maritime Metropolis of the Golden Northwest” was to be Astoria — once Astoria got a railroad. A brief and somewhat lurid account of the place of Astoria in western American history leads to a description…
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Ostensibly in pursuit of material to support my research on the foodways* of the Pacific Northwest, I collect old restaurant menus. One of my most treasured acquisitions is a tattered carte from the State Cafe of Huntington, Oregon. Huntington is located at the confluence of the Snake and Powder Rivers. It began its career as…
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“The Story of Carnation Milk” was published in Seattle in 1915, a 32-page illustrated booklet of recipes prefaced by a paean to milk in general and to “condensed” milk in particular. The publisher was the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company, operator of fifteen Carnation condensaries, all located “far from city soot and manufacturing impurities,…
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