Continued from Sept. 7 2022But by now most of the Oregon City residents were Protestants, and McLoughlin was Catholic. This would be no big deal today, and the Hudson’s Bay Company employees were also very broad-minded about such things – half of them being French voyageurs, after all – but[Read More…]

To the average Oregon City resident, there wasn’t much to celebrate in the vacant, dilapidated old house by the foot of Willamette Falls.The house had, until a few years before, been known as the Phoenix Hotel, and it had been a very flagrant bordello. Conveniently located right in the heart[Read More…]

Continued from the Aug. 24 edition BACK IN CYNTHIAN, the fugitives were lodged in an upstairs room in the county courthouse — Polk County didn’t have a jail yet. Both the Everman brothers, along with Enoch Smith and David Coe, were put in leg irons under guard there. Return Everman,[Read More…]

After frontier murder, suspect was auctioned off as a temporary slave. IN THE FIRST month of 1852, everyone in the frontier community of Cynthian was talking about the big crime wave.Well, it was big by frontier Oregon standards. Although it was (and still is) the seat of Polk County, Cynthian[Read More…]