Oregon Trivia & Tidbits - Page 7

Looking for Oregon trivia? Try our list Oregon little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

The state’s oldest seaside resort, Seaside (pop. 5,900) was developed in the 1870s by stagecoach and railroad magnate Ben Holladay, who built a racetrack, zoo and luxurious hotel to lure guests to the beach destination.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

The Darlingtonia State Natural Site, near Florence (pop. 7,263), is dedicated to preserving the Darlingtonia californica. Also called a cobra lily, the rare plant eats insects and belongs to the American pitcher plant family, Sarraceniaceae.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

Bike Friday, sold by the Eugene-based company of the same name, is a bicycle that folds up small enough to fit into a standard airline-size suitcase. An additional kit turns the suitcase into a trailer. Brothers Hanz and Alan Scholz invented the bike in the 1980s to help traveling cyclists.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Poet William Stafford (1914-1993) served on the faculty of Lewis and Clark College in Portland from 1948 to 1980. He was the author of 67 volumes of poetry, including The Rescued Year (1966) and An Oregon Message (1987).

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Held each July in Veneta (pop. 2,755), the Oregon Country Fair boosts the community’s population by about 50,000 people during its three-day run, requiring its own water, communications, security and recycling services. The festival began in 1969 as a fundraiser for an alternative school. Today, it focuses on arts, entertainment, crafts and food, with funds donated to local non-profit groups.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

Around 1855, Ah Bing, an immigrant from China, went to work for the Lewelling orchards in Milwaukie (pop. 20,490). After tending the orchard’s trees, which produced a new variety of fruit, he became the namesake for the new Bing cherries. Bing returned to China around 1889 and was not allowed to return to America because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was renewed in 1892.

first appeared: 7/31/2005

The 271-acre Tom McCall Preserve near Rowena (pop. 148), overlooking the Columbia River, is known for the spring wildflowers that bloom there from late February through June. About 300 plant species—including shooting stars, lupine, balsamroot, Columbia desert parsley and Indian paintbrush—can be found there, in the transition from the wetter, forested western side of the Cascade range to the drier bunchgrass prairies of the eastern side.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

A Busy Bee vacuum cleaner is a highlight of the Vacuum Cleaner Museum at Stark’s Vacuums in Portland. The Busy Bee was a hand-pump vacuum, manufactured between the late 1800s and early 1900s. To operate the machine, one person worked the pump and another used the nozzle.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

Named for Farewell Bend, one of the few locations where pioneers could cross the Deschutes River, Bend (pop. 52,029) was officially incorporated in 1905 and became the seat of Deschutes County when it was created in 1916. The city is celebrating its centennial this year.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Another Farewell Bend in Oregon is southeast of Huntington (pop. 515)—Farewell Bend State Park—where pioneers on the Oregon Trail left the Snake River to travel inland on their way to Oregon City.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Spanning 7,365 feet across the Columbia River on the Oregon-Washington border, McNary Dam near Umatilla (pop. 4,978) was begun in 1947 and named for Charles McNary, who served as a U.S. senator from 1918 until his death in 1944.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

When his wagon train was lost on Mount Hood’s south shoulder in 1845, Joel Palmer made the first recorded ascent of the 11,239-foot mountain by climbing to about 9,000 feet to survey a route for the wagons to follow.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

In the Agatha Christie room at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport (pop. 9,532), guests can read from the many Christie mystery books on the shelves and search for clues from each hidden in the room. The hotel also features other author-named rooms, from Mark Twain to Emily Dickinson, and a dining room called the "Tables of Content." A welcome retreat for book lovers, the hotel was named for Sylvia Beach, who ran the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris in the 1920s and ’30s.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

The Oregon Department of Transportation reports that in 2003, maintenance crews performed more than $2.7 million worth of snow plowing on highways statewide and used more than $3.9 million in winter highway sand—enough to fill a line of dump trucks bumper to bumper on Interstate 5 from Portland to Roseburg (pop. 20,017).

first appeared: 4/24/2005

The Kam Wah Chung & Company Museum in John Day (pop. 1,821) tells the story of Chinese herbal doctor Ing Hay, who treated Chinese gold-mine workers and pioneers in Oregon and surrounding states from 1887 to 1948.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

In the rainforest near Port Orford (pop. 1,153), amateur paleontologist E.V. Nelson created his first dinosaur, a Tyrannosaurus rex, in 1953. Two dozen large, brightly colored prehistoric creatures—from a three-horned triceratops to a winged pteranodon—followed over the next 40 years, lining the trails of Nelson’s Prehistoric Gardens.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

"Beaver money" became legal tender in Oregon on Feb. 15, 1849, after the Provisional Government of Oregon authorized the creation of $5 and $10 gold coins decorated with a beaver. Technically, only the federal government could legally mint coins, but a lack of coinage had forced gold dust to be used as money, which created valuing and exchange problems that the Beaver money solved. When the new territorial governor, Joe Lane, arrived on March 2 to take office, he voided the coinage law.

first appeared: 3/13/2005

A piece of lava from the Devils Garden in central Oregon now sits on the moon, thanks to Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin, who carried a small rock with him on his 1971 mission. The rock came from the lava lands in the mid-1960s, when Apollo astronauts trained in the central Oregon lava lands.

first appeared: 2/27/2005

Art Lacey bought a B-17G Flying Fortress bomber from Altus Air Force Base, Okla., in 1947, flew it to Portland, and then moved it to Milwaukie (pop. 20,490), where the airplane perched on top of his gas station. Although the gas station has closed and Lacey’s Lady is being restored, Lacey’s family plans to build a hangar for the plane once restoration is complete.

first appeared: 2/13/2005

The first person to win four gold medals in swimming during a single Olympiad, Don Schollander was raised in Lake Oswego (pop. 35,278). He won the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle events and was a member of the winning 4x100 and 4x200 freestyle relay teams at the 1964 Olympic games in Tokyo. The previous year, he was the first person to swim the 200-meter freestyle race in less than 2 minutes. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965.

first appeared: 1/30/2005

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