Oregon Blue Book

09/25/2020

The Oregon Blue Book sponsors a cover photo contest open to all amateur photographers who are Oregon residents. The photos must be taken in Oregon.

Contest
Winning photos will be published on the front and back covers of the print version of the 2021-2022 Oregon Blue Book.

Entrants
Open to photographers of any age who are Oregon residents and earn less than half of their income from landscape photography.

Entries
Photos must be original images taken by the entrant and may not have been previously commercially published.

Content
The cover photos must be in color and represent some aspect of Oregon such as landscapes, buildings or events.

Orientation and Editing
All photos submitted must have a *vertical (portrait)* orientation. Images may have minor alterations for color, contrast, etc. but may not be significantly altered, appear unnatural or have important elements added or removed.

Entries must be emailed by Thursday, October 22, 2020
to: [email protected]

To see more about the contest and how to enter, go to the Oregon Blue Book, online at: https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Pages/about-contest.aspx

Oregon City Camera Club
Klamath Bird Observatory
The Oregon Coast
University of Oregon Outdoor Program
Oregon Birding Association
Bird Watching in Oregon
Oregon State Parks

This is the contest winner for the 2019-2020 Oregon Blue Book front cover. “Light at the End of the Tunnel, Hike to Pittock Mansion, Portland” was taken by Meridith Allen

09/09/2020

Please note:

New content for the Oregon Blue Book page is now posted on the Oregon State Archives page. All of the same great stories you've come to enjoy on the Oregon Blue Book page will now be available on the Oregon State Archives page: https://www.facebook.com/OregonStateArchives

Please join us there!

Find us at https://sos.oregon.gov/archives and on Instagram at .

09/01/2020

The view from Yamhill continues
to reveal state, national cultural shifts

Yamhill, Oregon, about 30 miles southwest of Portland, is tiny – 1,024 people. It has had a front row seat to sweeping changes in Oregon’s society and culture from its start. The first people to live in that area were members of the Yamhelas Indian Tribe. White fur trappers and farmers from the eastern United States moved into the upper Willamette Valley, and by 1845, 2,000 white settlers lived there, outnumbering Native Americans. When gold was discovered in California in 1849, two out of three men left the Willamette Valley to chase their fortunes in California. In 1856, Philip H. Sheridan (later a Civil War general and General of the United States Army) arrived in the area as a soldier, sent to fight Indians and help build Fort Yamhill. Today the county’s main industry is agriculture, and it is the center of Oregon’s wine industry.

And still today, changes in Yamhill’s society and culture echo changes in the United State’s society and culture. One of Yamhill’s native sons, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, and his co-author and wife Sheryl WuDunn, have written Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope, organized around his home town. WuDunn, a New York City native, is a former New York Times correspondent and a banker; she and Kristof were married in 1988.

Tightrope’s exploration about the nation’s cultural shifts starts with a story about Kristof’s childhood friends, who rode with him on the “Number 6 School Bus.” “This journey of exploration has taken the two of us to all fifty states, and we tell stories here from Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. But many of the tales are from Yamhill, because it is close to our hearts and because it reflects the challenges of working-class America,” he explains.

After graduating from Yamhill Carlton High School, Kristof graduated from Harvard, and joined The New York Times, where he became an editor before moving back to Yamhill. In 1990 Kristof and WuDunn won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. In 2006, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

Photos: Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; Kristof visiting with journalism students at Yamhill-Carlton High School in Oregon, Kristof says on his page, "my old stomping ground. They grilled me!"

08/27/2020

Astoria bridge opens: clowns, cavemen,
pranksters but no rakish ballyhoo

August 27, 1966: “The same collection of clowns, cavemen and pranksters who have grown to be fixtures in Oregon civic events rode, marched and cavorted” at the four-day dedication ceremonies of the Astoria-Megler bridge over the Columbia River. About 35,000 people attended the festivities that opened the 1,232-foot bridge.

Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield had been in Astoria on August 11, 1962 for the bridge’s groundbreaking ceremonies. After he sifted the soil with a gold-colored shovel, he said “it was like putting a shovel to a dream.” To the crowd of 1,000, he addressed the controversy over billboards along the Coast Highway, U.S. 101. “As the bridge attracts more travelers to the coast, an important decision will have to be made to insure ‘the delicate balance between rakish ballyhoo and attractive, economically necessary advertising.’”

Four years later he returned and joined Washington Governor Daniel Evens in cutting the ribbon at the bridge’s dedication ceremonies. The 4.1 mile bridge was the final link between Tijuana, Mexico and the Canadian border. The $25 million dollar bridge was funded by bridge tolls. The money was raised two years ahead of schedule, and the toll booths closed on December 24, 1993.

Hatfield said the “span was a bridge to bring people together,” The Oregonian reported. The Astoria Chamber of Commerce issued official souvenir coins with an image of the bridge on the front of the coin, and “Official Souvenir Coin Good for 50 Cents in Trade at Astoria Chamber of Commerce” on the flip side.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

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Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo
City of Astoria Community Development
Clatsop County
The Oregonian
The Oregon Coast
Astoria–Megler Bridge
Mark O. Hatfield Library
Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce
Pacific Coast Highway

Photo: Astoria-Megler Bridge, as seen from Coxcomb Hill, was designed jointly by Oregon & Washington state highway departments (State Archives Scenic Image No. clatDA0002c); Astoria-Megler Bridge is the longest bridge in Oregon at just over 4 miles long (State Archives Scenic Image No. clatDA0019); Souvenir commemorative bridge medal issued for the event.

08/24/2020

In Elgin, one of Oregon’s
last opera houses survives, thrives

August 9, 1912: Not even a power outage could dim enthusiasm for the first performance at the Elgin Opera House. A troupe of 24 opera singers from Portland, performing “The Chimes of Normandy,” drew a crowd to the new building. “Because of Elgin being without electric lights since a fire destroyed the city’s power plant on August 2, the crowd was not as large as had been expected,” The Oregon Daily Journal reported. Concert goers had to be content admiring the opera house’s pressed tin ceiling, slanted floor, plush seats and curtains, and wait for another time to marvel at its chandeliers.

The 1,120 people living in Elgin in 1912 had reason for great optimism. The O.W.R. & N. railroad had just linked La Grande, Joseph and Pendleton, and Elgin citizens, anticipating a boom, decided their city needed an opera house.

Most Oregon cities at the turn of the century had opera houses, which were like convention centers, places where plays and boxing matches could be held, civic groups could gather, and politicians could speak. Only rarely were they used for opera performances, but since many people thought theaters were risqué, and “opera house” sounded classy, the buildings were called opera houses.

The Elgin Opera House, twenty miles northeast of La Grande, was built in 1912 as a combination city hall/center for performing arts. The two-story brick-and-stone building at 100 North 8th Street housed city offices on the first floor and had a small jail in the basement. The state-of-the-art theater was upstairs.

La Grande architect John L. Slater designed the building, which cost $15,000.

The building was dedicated on May 18, 1912, when the Elgin High School commencement exercises were held there for the twelve graduating seniors.

The facility has been restored and hosts several cultural events a year.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

*During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we remain isolated from each other, we want to ask your opinion on this post – do you like it? Would you like to see more stories like this? What types of stories would you like to read about? Please let us know by commenting on this post. Thank you!

The Elgin Opera House
Elgin, Oregon
Oregon Daily Journal
Union County 4-H Oregon
Union County, Oregon
Elgin High School (Oregon)

Photo: The Elgin Opera House (State Archives Scenic Image No. uniD0014)

08/20/2020

Camp White soldiers, prisoners of war
transformed Medford overnight

Five days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the federal government began building Camp White army training grounds, nine miles from Medford. Between 1942 and 1945, more than 40,000 troops trained at the base, and beginning in 1943, German prisoners of war were held there.

In 1942, Medford, the largest city in Jackson County, had 11,000 residents. Almost overnight, Camp White ended the Great Depression for the county: soldiers rented rooms in family homes, overwhelmed restaurants, and filled movie theaters. USO centers sprung up to entertain the troops.

Camp White’s training grounds were dotted with concrete pillboxes, which are still on the site. The army took abandoned farmhouses, painted swastikas on them, and recruits used them to learn urban warfare. Combat training was so intense Camp White earned the nickname, “The Alcatraz of Boot Camps.”

The camp was also a base for 3,517 prisoners of war, most from Germany. Many of them worked through the Oregon Emergency Farm Labor Service, providing farm labor. In 1945, the POWs harvested half a million bushels of pears in Jackson County, and dug up potatoes in the Klamath Basin.

The 50,000-acre military base was decommissioned in April 1946. It contained 1,300 buildings, some of which were moved, intact, to the University of Oregon. The base’s brick hospital became the Veteran’s Administration Domiciliary. Today, it is the VA’s Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center and Clinics – the White City Domiciliary, and the Camp White Military Museum is located in the building. The remaining buildings became the center of White City, an unincorporated community established in 1960, on Highway 62.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

*During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we remain isolated from each other, we want to ask your opinion on this post – do you like it? Would you like to see more stories like this? What types of stories would you like to read about? Please let us know by commenting on this post. Thank you!

Va Domicilary White City Or
Camp White Military Museum
City of Medford, Local Government
Jackson County, Oregon
Jackson County Master Gardener Association Oregon
Forgotten Oregon
Oregon's Forgotten & Abandoned Places
University of Oregon
Offbeat Oregon History

To read soldiers’ stories about their time at Camp White: http://www.300thcombatengineersinwwii.com/camp.html

Images from Camp White and prisoners' mail http://www.300thcombatengineersinwwii.com/camp.html

08/17/2020

First lady Pat Nixon visits Medford,
rides covered wagon, charms crowd

August 17, 1971 – Patricia Nixon, wife of President Richard Nixon, arrived in Medford to transfer Camp White, a World War II military base and German prisoner of war camp, to Jackson County.

Mrs. Nixon flew into the Medford airport, where Mrs. William Frake, president of Medford’s Republican Women’s Club, handed the first lady a bouquet of red roses. Nixon gave the bouquet away, flower by flower, to children lined up at the airport fence, then continued on to 432-acre Camp White. After the speeches, motorcyclists, dog trainers and parachutists demonstrated how they would use the new county park. “At one point, when five parachutists were hurtling from the sky, Mrs. Tom McCall commented, ‘It looks like they’re going to land right here.’

“ ‘Never mind,’ Mrs. Nixon said calmly, ‘we can run faster than they can fall,’” The Oregonian reported.

“And the President’s wife, for a few minutes, was ‘baby sitting’ Jennifer Elizabeth Walker, 2 ½ years old. Jennifer had been perched on the shoulders of her father, Jay Walker, while he was explaining the dog retrieval exhibition to Mrs. Nixon. When it was time to show his dog he put the tot down next to the guest of honor who held her hand until he was through.”

The Ashland Kiltie Band played, and Nixon autographed its drum, then rode in a covered wagon built and driven by local historian George McUne.

Camp White was valued at $95,000. Presenting it to Jackson County was part of President Nixon’s Legacy of the Parks program, which transferred federal lands to local governments. Under this program, part of Camp Adair was transferred to Benton County and a $70,000 Naval Reserve Training Center was transferred to the City of Roseburg.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

During WWII 700 Camps in 46 states housed some 425,000 German prisoners, supervised by the Provost Marshal General. "Other than barbed wire and watchtowers, the camps resembled standard US military training sites, as the Geneva Convention of 1929 required the US to provide living quarters comparable to those of its own military" - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_States

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Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum
The Richard Nixon Library Foundation - Special Events
The Oregonian
Southern Oregon Historical Society
Jackson County Oregon USA
Medford, Oregon
Offbeat Oregon History
Get Oregonized
Oregon's Forgotten & Abandoned Places
Forgotten Oregon

Photo: shows Patricia Nixon riding in a covered wagon built and driven by Medford historian George McUne, from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library

08/14/2020

As 1918 pandemic ravaged Oregon,
people were split over wearing masks

On October 22, 1918, San Francisco became the first city in the United States to pass a law requiring people to wear masks. In Oregon, reaction was mixed.

Salem: “Influenza masks are now the latest in Salem. Members of the Students Army Training Corps at Willamette University have started the style and if Salem follows the health rules of San Francisco, everybody will be wearing them. Even in Portland there may be seen on the streets hundreds wearing the white gauze masks.”

Portland: “Portland Red Cross workers, who are reporting regularly for work in the parlors of the First Presbyterian Church, Twelfth and Alder streets. From 10 to 30 women work each day from 10 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Influenza masks and war sewing, including little black aprons for French and Belgian orphans, are being turned out in large quantities.

In the midst of the 1918 pandemic, voters faced national elections for congressional seats.

Salem: “Members of election boards next Tuesday will have the option of masks or no masks. Dr. C.E. Cashatt, county health officer, strongly recommends the wearing of masks , but at the same time says there is no law compelling those who serve on the election boards to fix up like highwaymen.”

Coos Bay/North Bend: The pandemic hit the shipyards in Coos County hard. On October 30, 85 workers at The Coos Bay Shipbuilding Company stayed home sick. Both Kruse & Banks shipbuilders in North Bend and the Coos Bay shipyard decided on October 30 to require workers to wear masks.

By November 8, the shipbuilders rebelled. “The workingmen declared the requirement of wearing masks was a detriment to work and much time was lost through ineffective breathing when masks are worn. The same condition applied at the Coos Bay shipyard.”

Eugene: The University of Oregon stayed open during the pandemic. “On October 24, faculty wives, led by Sally Allen, wife of School of Journalism dean Eric W. Allen, had made 10 dozen masks for university nurses and attendants. Members of the SATC (Student Army Training Corps) here were ordered to wear gauze masks during the influenza epidemic if the situation seemed to warrant it, in a telegram received yesterday morning from SATC headquarters in San Francisco.” However, the U.S. Army surgeon decided the situation did not warrant masks. “The epidemic is practically over as far as the Students’ Army Training Corps men are concerned,” said Colonel W. H. C. Bowen, SATC commanding officer at the UO.

Grants Pass: Some of the local physicians are advising that everyone wear gauze masks as a preventative against Spanish influenza. While this is not an order, those physicians state that in their opinion the wearing of masks will do much to eliminate the spread of the disease.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

*During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we remain isolated from each other, we want to ask your opinion on this post – do you like it? Would you like to see more stories like this? What types of stories would you like to read about? Please let us know by commenting on this post. Thank you!

Oregon Public Health Institute
Oregon Public Health Association
Oregon Health Authority
Providence Health & Services - Oregon Region
The Oregonian
Forgotten Oregon
Offbeat Oregon History

Images: Workers at an information desk wearing masks in San Francisco in 1918.Credit...Hamilton Henry Dobbin, via California State Library; The attached advertisement is from the Oregonian, October 25, 1918

08/11/2020

Truth will out: DNA proves Sandy woman
was President Harding’s daughter

When Elizabeth Ann Blaesing died in Welches in 2005, it looked like the greatest mystery of her life went to the grave with her.

The mystery: Was President Warren Harding her father?

Ten years later, DNA testing proved that Blaesing was, indeed, the president’s daughter.

Blaesing’s mother, Nan Britton, was 20 years old, 31 years younger than Harding, when they met in 1917. While serving in the Senate in 1917, Harding began his affair with Britton, at the same time conducting an affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips, a friend of first lady Florence Harding. Harding and his wife had no children. Britton later wrote that their daughter was conceived in his Senate office, and that the affair continued while Harding was President.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Ann, was born on October 22, 1919, before Harding became the twenty-ninth president. He never met his daughter but gave Britton money to support her. When Harding died unexpected in 1923, days after visiting Oregon, the late president’s family refused to give Britton money to support Elizabeth Ann. Britton wrote a book, “The President’s Daughter,” in 1927, but she was unable to provide concrete proof that her daughter was Harding’s child.

In the 1980s Britton, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing and their extended family moved to the Mt. Hood area. Britton died in 1991. Blaesing and her three sons lived quietly in Sandy, where Elizabeth Ann shunned all requests from reporters to tell her story.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/us/dna-is-said-to-solve-a-mystery-of-warren-hardings-love-life.html
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

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City of Sandy, Oregon – City Government
Welches, Oregon
President Warren G. Harding Tomb
Harding Home
Emigrant Springs State Heritage Area
Offbeat Oregon History
Forgotten Oregon
Oregon's Forgotten & Abandoned Places
Get Oregonized

Images: Florence and President Warren G. Harding, Library of Congress; Cover of the book, The President's Daughter, featuring a young Elizabeth Ann Blaesing

08/09/2020

August 9th is World Indigenous People’s Day as established by the U.N. To mark the day, we have a post about Petroglyphs in Oregon:

Ancient messages hiding in plain sight: Oregon petroglyphs resist decoding

Whatever they were trying to say, it must have been important.

Thousands of years ago Native Americans etched messages – well, maybe messages – into basalt boulders at what we now call Picture Rock Pass Petroglyphs Site, between Silver Lake and Summer Lake in southcentral Oregon.

No one who knows who carved the messages, or why, or what the messages say, or even if the carvings are messages, according to the National Park Service. Are the images a map? A warning? Art for art’s sake?

Discovering who carved the rocks and when they carved the rocks would be a first step to unlocking the enigmatic images. Figuring out which Native Americans tribes carved the petroglyphs is a challenge, Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist with the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, told the Associated Press in 2013. “When you get back into this time period, if you speak with Native Americans they will tell you they were made (created) there and that is obviously their people and their artwork. But approaching it from a scientific point of view — what we can prove — at this point, it is impossible to connect these to any one tribal group.” Native Americans from the Tenino, Klamath and Northern Paiute tribes were known to have hunted around the lakes, at different eras.

At the Picture Rock Pass Petrogylph Site, which is administered by the Bureau of Land Management, the abstract images may be carvings of people – or of spirits. Or animals. Or something else.

According to experts at Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico: “There were many reasons for creating petroglyphs, most of which are not well understood by modern society. Petroglyphs are more than just “rock art,” picture writing, or an imitation of the natural world. They should not be confused with hieroglyphics, which are symbols used to represent words, nor thought of as ancient Indian graffiti. Petroglyphs are powerful cultural symbols that reflect the complex societies and religions of the surrounding tribes.”

The who, what, when, why and how questions are locked in rock, as the silent stones hold secret messages from Oregon’s indigenous peoples.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

*During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we remain isolated from each other, we want to ask your opinion on this post – do you like it? Would you like to see more stories like this? What types of stories would you like to read about? Please let us know by commenting on this post. Thank you!

The Official Klamath Tribes Page.
Northern Paiute
Burns Paiute Tribe
University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History
International Day of World's Indigenous People and Lyfe Language Campaign
Oregon Historical Society
Picture Rock Pass Petroglyphs Site
Bureau of Land Management
Petroglyph National Monument
Offbeat Oregon History
Forgotten Oregon

Images: #1 Picture Rock Pass Petroglyphs Site, Wikipedia; #2 Photo, probably taken in the 1920s or 1930s, shows Indian rock art at Picture Rocks Pass, located in Lake County between Silver and Summer lakes. It is part of the Marshall Family collection of photographs.

Rock art, some tens of thousands of years old, can be found on all inhabited continents. Generally speaking, there are two forms of rock art, petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs are created by carving into the rock, while pictographs are created by painting the surface of a rock. The term rock art refers to both petroglyphs and pictographs.

Picture Rocks Pass is named after the petroglyphs shown in the photograph above. This photo shows anthropomorphs—human-like figures—and animal figures that have been chalked in order to increase the contrast for photographs. It should be noted that, although a common practice in the past, it is not appropriate to chalk petroglyphs in this manner. It is illegal to do so on public lands. – Oregon History Project, https://oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/indian-rock-art-picture-rocks-pass/ #.Xy3KTS2ZMc0

08/07/2020

Downtown Roseburg destroyed by accidental explosion in 1959;
emergency workers from around the state headed to help

August 7, 1959: Six and a half tons of explosives ripped downtown Roseburg apart in the middle of the night, killing 14 people and injuring another 125. Eight square blocks of businesses were destroyed, and the explosion left a crater 52 feet wide and 20 feet deep in the town of 12,000 residents.

“Heart of Thriving Town Broken by Terrible Blast,” headlines blared. Roseburg’s Mercy Hospital, a few blocks from the explosion, was badly damaged. “The entire section of the building facing the explosion was virtually wrecked by the power of the blast,” The Oregonian reported. “The wreckage included the hospital’s operating room and numerous private patient rooms and wards. The searing heat from the blast ignited brush and trees below the hospital. The janitorial staff aided by a few nurses extinguished this fire with hoses from the hospital. None of the hospital personnel was injured beyond superficial cuts from flying glass.” Nonetheless, the hospital treated about 40 emergency blast patients; the Douglas Community Hospital, farther from the blast was undamaged, and treated about 70 blast victims. The Veterans Administration Hospital farther west in Roseburg was unaffected.

An hour after the blast, a mercy flight plane with two Grants Pass doctors took off from the Medford Airport for Roseburg. Three California-Pacific Utilities Gas Co. workers flew in with the doctors, to shut off gas mains in the city. Josephine County sheriff’s deputies rush to Roseburg to help, as did firefighters from Cottage Grove and Springfield. Governor Mark Hatfield was in Tennessee. Acting governor Walter Pearson, dispatched the Oregon National Guard to Roseburg, where the Red Cross set up emergency stations to help victims.

The 1:14 a.m. explosion happened when driver George Rutherford, 46, parked a Pacific Power Company truck, loaded with explosives, in front of the Garretsen Building Supply Company. Rutherford spent the night at the Umpqua Hotel, three blocks away from his truck. A fire broke out at the Garretsen building in the night, igniting the dynamite and setting off the nitro carbo nitrate in Rutherford’s truck. When he heard that the Garretsen building was on fire, Rutherford started to run to his truck, but didn't make it to the truck, and was injured in the explosion. Bystanders loaded him into a taxi, which took him to the hospital, where he was later released.

Among those killed were a policeman, a fireman and several people who lived nearby, including a four-year-old girl.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/roseburg_blast/ #.XysWMS2ZMc0
https://oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/roseburg-blast-crater-1959/ #.XysZ9y2ZMc0

*During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we remain isolated from each other, we want to ask your opinion on this post – do you like it? Would you like to see more stories like this? What types of stories would you like to read about? Please let us know by commenting on this post. Thank you!

The Oregonian
Roseburg, Oregon
Douglas County Museum Foundation
Douglas County, Oregon
Mercy Medical Center (Roseburg, Oregon)
Forgotten Oregon
Offbeat Oregon History
Get oregonized
Oregon's Forgotten & Abandoned Places

Photos: Crater created by the truck explosion (location of truck)
Courtesy Oregon Hist. Soc. Research Lib., ba015174; Area near the crater, Roseburg, Courtesy Oregon Hist. Soc. Research Lib., ba015182; Roseburg Blast exhibit, Douglas County Museum, Courtesy Ulrich Hardt

08/06/2020

Carrot tops, titan beauties, gingers and rozzies celebrated at Taft’s annual Redheaded Roundup

In 1930, the tiny coast city of Taft held its first tongue-in-cheek Redheaded Roundup, “a celebration of carrot tops everywhere.” Started by local businessman Manville Robison, a redhead himself, the 500-person town’s festival was attracting 15,000 people by 1935.

In 1935, every redhead who attended the festival got a polished Oregon coast agate from the Taft-Nelscott Chamber of Commerce. The chamber also gave prizes to the tallest, homeliest, bashfulest, oldest and toughest redheads, and to the largest redheaded family, redheaded twins, and redheads traveling the greatest distance to reach the roundup. The Redhead Roundup queen won a cruise to Alaska.

Two years earlier, in 1932, Oregon Secretary of State was chosen to crown the queen at the Roundup pageant. The next day, the Statesman-Journal reported: “Hal E. Hoss must have had a great day with the redheads at Taft Sunday. He was expected back here yesterday, but the latest word had it he will not return from his vacation until the latter part of the week. Hoss officiated at the redhead event held there, and while it was known he had a weakness for beautiful girls, it was not known until then he did not prefer blondes.”

In 1937, a group of Oregon State Police officers judged the pageant and escorted Queen Madelyn Thompson of Ocean Lake and her court.

When the last Redhead Roundup was held in 1941, crowds were so large that area hotels were full and visitors rented rooms from local residents. “The reds took over here Saturday – not the reds of Moscow school but those of the carrot tops or Titian tassels,” The Oregonian reported. “There were enough redheads around to give a bull delirium tremors as the annual two-day Redhead Roundup opened under a cloudy sky.” At the Pines Hotel, Portland police chief Harry M. Niles crowned Queen Selma MacLeod of Mohler, who won a six-day, all expense paid visit to Sun Valley. Local bands and groups, including Siletz Indians in native garb performing tribal dances, marched in the parade. And on the beach, in “the squirtless clam-digging event, in which blondes and brunettes joined as well as redheads,” dug frantically for 69 buried clamshells, each containing a bright, new quarter.

About two percent of the world’s population has red hair. World War II ended the pageant after 1941, when wartime regulations banned large public gatherings. Taft became part of Lincoln City in 1964. Today, visitors to the North Lincoln County Historical Museum can view a life-size diorama of Taft’s Redhead Roundup beauty queens.
– Research and write-up by Pacific Northwest Historian and State Archives Volunteer Kristine Deacon

RedHeads
Taft Historic District
North Lincoln County Historical Museum
Oregon State Police
Lincoln City, Oregon
Offbeat Oregon History
The Oregonian
Statesman Journal
Newport's Historic Bayfront
Forgotten Oregon
Get oregonized
Oregon Coast Today

Photos: Redheaded Roundup publicity photo, courtesy North Lincoln County Historical Museum; 1937 Oregon State Police officers who crowned Queen Madelyn and escorted the court