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Offbeat Oregon History
Dynamite used to
be a regular part of
Oregon life
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
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C OTTAGE G ROVE T AX O FFICE
9A
T
here was a time, not so
many years ago, when
every Oregonian over the age of
12 had access to dynamite.
Not that they could simply
walk into a hardware store and
buy some — although in the
early years, they could. But
even as late as the 1960s, the
laws restricting explosives pur-
chasing were mild enough that
it wasn’t uncommon for farm-
ers to buy the stuff for stump
removal, or to work a mining
claim. And you don’t have to go
back too many years before that
to reach a time when anybody
who wanted dynamite could get
some — for good purposes or
bad ones.
As if that weren’t enough,
anyone who wanted to make his
own dynamite could do so with
great ease and total anonym-
ity. All that was necessary was
a bottle of glycerin oil, some
nitric acid and a few pounds of
sawdust.
“A boy can make it and there
is no law to prevent it,” M. Ben-
nett remarked in the St. Helens
Columbian newspaper in 1885.
“The sale of opium and poisons
are restricted, but dynamite, the
greatest and most terrible de-
structive engine of the 19th cen-
tury, may be bought by anyone
at 36 cents per pound.”
This is an aspect of life in a
frontier state that’s not much
remembered today. Of course,
personal dynamite ownership is
unheard-of now. In 1970, federal
legislation restricted explosives
to people who’d been granted a
special permit by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Today, nobody without a permit
is even allowed to carry a stick
of dynamite across a room, to
say nothing of actually buying
one or lighting it off.
Not many people would dis-
agree that this change is a good
one. Looking back through old
newspaper articles from the late
1800s and early 1900s, it’s clear
that universal access to dyna-
mite occasionally makes for
some high drama, even in a re-
mote frontier state like Oregon.
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The manufacture
of dynamite
Dynamite roasting
on an open fi re
Dynamite was invented in
1867, famously, by engineer
and peace-prize founder Alfred
Nobel in Sweden. Nobel fi gured
out that although nitroglycerin
was too unstable and dangerous
to use for construction blast-
ing, if an absorbing agent like
sawdust were used to soak it
up, it became relatively safe to
handle.
Commercial dynamite was
soon widely available for any-
one who wanted to blow stuff
up. And by the early 1880s, ter-
rorist organizations like the Irish
Republican Brotherhood were
already starting to use it to drive
home political messages.
Most dynamite at that time
was made locally, since it was
tricky and dangerous to trans-
port. A dynamite maker would
mix nitroglycerin and sawdust
together and roll it up like a
cigarette in heavy paper. To det-
onate it, one needed a blasting
cap — like a heavy fi recracker
tucked into a bundle of dyna-
mite sticks. Blasting caps could
be set off with a burning fuse
or with an electrical pulse sent
from one of those plunger-type
magneto detonators that Wile E.
Coyote used to use in practically
every Road Runner cartoon.
The strength of dynamite was
represented with a percentage
fi gure: 50-percent dynamite
is made of a 50-50 mix of ni-
troglycerine and sawdust, by
weight; 90-percent (also called
‘Gelatine’) is 90-10; and so on.
There were some other issues,
too, that made it hard for blast-
ing professionals to buy life
insurance. Dynamite “froze” at
45 degrees, and became unus-
able. This was great for safety
if you had to transport it in cold
weather, but if you had a blast-
ing operation to undertake when
it was 25 or 30 degrees out, it
meant you were probably going
to be thawing your dynamite out
beside a woodstove or campfi re
— an activity that was just as
dangerous as it sounds.
That’s how Irvin Reed of
Bend got his bell rung in De-
cember 1905. He had 24 sticks
laid out on a box near a camp-
fi re while his two co-workers la-
bored to drill out blasting holes
for a ditch they were excavating
in the frozen ground. Then, as
Reed was bending over the dy-
namite — probably gathering a
few sticks up, intending to use
them — they went off, hurl-
ing him some distance and rip-
ping most of the clothes off his
body. Amazingly, he survived,
although he was partly blinded
and disfi gured by the massive
blast.
Occupational
hazards
Almost all dynamite in the
1800s was fairly safe when it
was fresh, but it got more unsta-
ble and dangerous the longer it
sat around. That’s because over
time, the nitroglycerin would
leach out of the sawdust, satu-
rating the paper wrapping and
leaking out and pooling in the
bottom of the dynamite case.
Remember, the whole reason
dynamite was invented was
because liquid nitroglycerin
was so dangerous. Any little jar
could set off a box of dynamite
if it had been allowed to sit long
enough.
The Dynamite
Kid
One early Oregon story in-
volving dynamite, relayed by
Richard Dillon in his book
“Shanghaiing Days,” concerns
a young man named George
Banks. George was one of those
rock-solid young men, poised
and confi dent and morally up-
standing. In the mid-1890s, he
had a job working on the por-
tage railroad at Cascade Locks.
One day, George was down
in Portland picking up a load
of freight, and he missed his re-
turn sailing on the riverboat. So
there he was, stuck on the wharf
with the crates of merchandise
he was supposed to bring back
— probably stuck there until the
next morning.
Luckily, some friendly, help-
ful fellows noticed George
and offered to help him out.
They made a deal and soon the
strangers were back with a boat
of some kind (Dillon doesn’t
say, but it was probably a steam
launch).
After the strangers had helped
George load his crates onto the
launch, they cast off and started
heading downstream. George
was puzzled by this at fi rst, un-
til one of the strangers informed
him — no doubt belligerently,
with much fl exing of muscles,
to encourage him not to try
to fi ght his way out — that he
was a sailor now, and they were
bringing him to Astoria to put
him aboard his new ship.
“You ain’t gonna shanghai
me,” George retorted, reaching
into his pocket. “I’ll blow you
to hell fi rst.”
His hand came out full of
blasting caps.
Presumably that’s the point at
which the would-be shanghaiers
realized the boxes they’d helped
load on board the boat were full
of dynamite. They also soon
thereafter learned that George’s
nickname among his friends
was “Dynamite Kid.”
Needless to say, the boat im-
mediately turned and headed
upstream to the construction
site, where George unloaded his
cargo, paid the men as agreed,
and went about his work.
But stories of dynamite being
used to foil crime are vanishing-
ly rare compared with accounts
of the stuff being used on the
other side of the law. Dynamite
offered magnifi cent prospects
to criminals. Roadbuilding
crews of all sorts tended to have
it around, and some of them
didn’t do a particularly good
job of looking after it, so crooks
quickly learned it was easy to
get. We’ll talk about some of
the more famous and infamous
examples of dynamite-related
crime in next week’s column.
(Sources: Dillon, Richard.
Shanghaiing Days. New York:
Coward, 1961; Bend Bulle-
tin, 12-15-1905; Eugene City
Guard, 2-21-1885; St. Helens
Columbian, 5-22-1885)
Finn J.D. John teaches at
Oregon State University and
writes about odd tidbits of Or-
egon history. To contact him
or suggest a topic: fi nn2@off-
beatoregon.com or 541-357-
2222.
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