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OMSI Science Pub: Oregon’s Summer Resident Gray Whales (15-May-2012)

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Omsi Science PubOregon’s Summer Resident Gray Whales: Unleashing a Well-Kept Secret is the title of Tuesday, May 15, 2012 OMSI Science Pub at the Mission Theater (1624 NW Glisan):

Few people realize that there is a pod of about 70 gray whales that spends the summer off the Pacific Northwest coast. These whales spend the winter around Baja but have figured out that they don’t have to migrate all the way to Alaska for the summertime; instead, they stay and feed in the waters off Oregon. At this Science Pub, find out about the individual whales that consistently come back each summer, their personalities, what they eat, and the research being done to record and preserve them.

Presenter Carrie Newell is a professor of marine biology at Lane Community College and is a gray whale researcher who hosts whale watching tours off Depoe Bay.

The science begins at 7pm but arrive early (5pm doors open) to secure your beer, grub, and a seat! There’s a $5.00 suggested donation/cover charge. Minors with adults are welcome, otherwise this event is 21 and over.

December 29, 1854: Tillamook’s Morning Star is Completed

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Morning Star 2 (replica of the original)Unable to find a captain willing to risk his ship on the Tillamook Bay bar in the 1850s, the denizens of Tillamook County faced a dilemma. They had plenty of milk, butter, and cheese, but no sugar, flour, or coffee – they had to laboriously grind wheat kernels in their coffee grinders to bake bread, and they resorted to drinking a toasted-wheat beverage instead of coffee or tea.

So they decided to build a boat.

Instead of seeing their products go to waste, the settlers set to work. With no lumber mills nearby, they started with standing timber. From native Douglas fir, they shaped a 37-foot keel and built a 6-foot hold using 6-foot by 8-foot timbers spaced 10 inches apart. These were then covered with a 2-inch thick planking of Douglas fir, sawed by hand into 40-foot lengths.

Metal needed for spikes and fittings was hand-forged from materials left by the wreck of the Shark, a 12-gun U.S. sloop of war, which broke up on the Columbia River Bar and drifted south to the beach at Arch Cape in 1846. It took six trips with four horses to pack it on the trail over Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain, across the Nehalem River and south to Kilchis Point in Tillamook Bay — a total of 289 miles by today’s roads.

The rigging and sails were made from bolts of canvas, rope and blocks bought for $10 from the Tillamook Indians, who salvalged them from an 1851 wreck that drifted to Netarts Bay west of Tillamook. [Source: The Morning Star of Tillamook (pdf)]

The Morning Star was completed on December 29, 1854, and launched soon after.

Further reading:

December 27, 1901: French Bark Henriette Sinks in Astoria Harbor

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Morning Oregonian headline, 28 December 1901The French bark Henriette sank in Astoria’s harbor on December 27, 1901 (Morning Oregonian, 28 December 1901).

ASTORIA, Dec. 27. – The French bark Henriette, with a cargo of redwood lumber for Europe, is at the bottom of the river a short distance out from the wharves opposite Kopp’s brewery, in Uppertown. Yesterday afternoon and the night previous, the bark had dragged her anchors, and was well outside the river channel toward the shore, and a tug went to her to taker her to a safe anchorage in the lower harbor, but the tug’s service was declined. At low water last evening, shortly after 8 o’clock, the bark settled on some hard object and immediately began to leak. The tide at the time was extremely low, registering 1.9 feet below zero, one of the lowest of the year.

The pumps were manned, but the water began to make headway until 2 o’clock, this morning, when the officers and crew left her, and shortly afterwards she keeled over and sank.

Built on the Seine in 1874, the Henriette was a diminutive craft of the old school. She had been loaded with 400,000 feet of redwood lumber from California, which had been brought to Portland by steam schooner.

Within days agents for the bark called for bids to release her from the harbor. Green redwood lumber differs from fir and pine in the respect that all of it will not float, making the task of saving the cargo quite difficult (Morning Oregonian, 29 December 1901).

By March she had been raised and her cargo recovered (Morning Oregonian, 6 March 1902)

Kick Ass Oregon History Vol 3 #8: Oregon’s First Christmas

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Kick Ass Oregon History Vol 3 #8: Oregon's First ChristmasKick Ass Oregon History is the latest series of podcasts from the enthusiastic historians behind ORHistory.com.

Volume 3 #8 dropped yesterday – Oregon’s First Christmas:

In which 3 Men and A Baby (plus 28 other men, a girl and a dog) eat a lot of elk, get rained on and somehow stay cheery, despite not having the latest toys.

Featuring an interview with Tom Wilson of Fort Clatsop.

The brains behind this Kick Ass project are the crack hustlers of Oregon History Doug Kenck-Crispin and Andy Lindberg. Doug is a graduate student studying Public History and Pacific Northwest History at PSU, and Andy, though a Portland native, is currently working as an actor in New York City. Doug does most of the research and writing for the podcasts with input from Andy, who voices the broadcasts with a thespian’s flair.

With the Kick Ass Oregon History podcast they plan to cover just the good stuff: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and Earth Shattering, Devastating Destruction.

Ultimately, our goal is to take Oregon History out of the hallowed halls of the academy, get folks excited and enthused about this shared history, and get them out into the state, digging it and experiencing it. Get them to embrace it, and get their boots muddy in the process. It’s all OUR History; nobody owns it.

Visit ORHistory.com and stay tuned to @Oregon_History on Twitter for further details on specific episodes and the series. Catch up on missed episodes at the Kick Ass Oregon History archives.

December 10, 1805: Fort Clatsop Construction Begins

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William Clark's plan for Fort ClatsopConstruction of Fort Clatsop, the winter quarters for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, began on December 10, 1805.

all hands were employed at work notwithstanding the rain. Capt Clark and party returned to camp, they found the ocean to be about 7 miles from our camp… in the evening we laid the foundation of our huts.

The fort, near present day Astoria, was about fifty feet long on each side, with cabins in parallel on two sides and gates at the ends. The expedition spent over three, rainy, months in the fort. When the expedition left in Spring, 1806 they left the fort to Clatsop Chief Coboway.

A replica fort (the second, after the first burnt down) is now part of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park.