Eddyville, Oregon

Episode 183 / 6 August 2020 / 155 min / full

A Stupid, Vicious, Unlucky Mess

"We're going to Eddieville, Oregon today, which you've probably never heard of, cause it's a tiny, tiny town... this is in Lincoln County." about 0:05:11

The case: Murder of Dorothy Biggs (August 1984). Read the case file.

The figures, as told in 2020

Median age

55 and a half

Median household income

$24,688

Median home value

$391,700

Two-bedroom rent

about $884 a month

Cost of living

114 out of 100

Religious

21.8%

Property crime

▲ about 25% higher

Violent crime

▲ almost double

History, in brief

• The town is named for Israel F. Eddy, the postmaster in 1888. about 0:06:27
• Eddy was a huge, heavy-set man of remarkable strength who acted as the town bouncer, seizing brawlers by the neck and dunking them in the horse trough. about 0:07:09
• At a wedding in 1908, aged 84, Eddy appeared in a coonskin cap and ear trumpet and told the guests he had cured the flu with a swig of piano polish he mistook for medicine. about 0:07:59
• Israel F. Eddy died in 1911 at 87 years old. about 0:09:30
• The post office was established in 1868 and the place was first called Little Elk for the nearby river. about 0:09:49
• Eddy moved the town further from the creek to reduce flooding, and it was moved and renamed several times. about 0:10:02
• In 1900 a post office near the mouth of the creek was built with the name Eddyville. about 0:10:39
• Eddyville was a stop on the Oregon Pacific Railroad, which after 17 years of financial and legal complications became a branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. about 0:10:53
• The government established a 1.3 million acre reservation and more than 4,000 people from 20 different tribes were resettled there, on land it deemed unfit for farming and inaccessible. about 0:11:10
• In 1861 a sea captain was shown beds of oysters in the bay, San Francisco companies came to harvest them, and the supply was depleted within a couple of years. about 0:13:05
• Troops were withdrawn from the reservation for the Civil War and replaced by volunteers who lobbied to open the land to non-Indian settlement. about 0:13:31
• Logging grew after the army built roads and railroad lines, and Eddyville became a pass-through for logging trucks. about 0:14:03
• The Roosevelt Military Highway was built in the 1920s, begun during the First World War to move supplies, and it follows old Indian routes to the coast. about 0:14:23

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