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A small boulder w/ a plaque marks the site of the 1959 Roseburg Blast, or simply "The Blast", which occurred on August 7th at 1:14AM in Roseburg, Oregon. George Rutherford of Chehalis, Washington drove a Pacific Powder Company truck full dynamite and nitro carbo nitrate into Roseburg & parked for the night in front of his delivery stop at Garretson Building Supply. During the night the building caught fire & onlookers saw the blaze but paid little attention to the truck despite it saying "Explosives" on it. It wasn't until seconds before the blast that one of the officers noticed the label & told everyone to get out here. The blast killed 14 people & leveled eight city blocks, destroyed 30 more, blew out windows nine miles away & could be heard from 30 miles away. It created a crater 52 feet in length & 20 feet deep, only two pieces of the truck were ever recovered. Such a sight prompted fears of nuclear war during the escalating Cold War & those who were flying over the explosion deemed that that was the case. The plaque reads:
"This is the site of the explosion which occurred in the early hours of August 7, 1959, resulting in fourteen deaths and injuring fifty seven persons. A fire in a lumber yard detonated a truck loaded with explosives and caused property losses estimated at more than twelve million dollars."
It took a few months to clear the damage and little evidence of the explosion remains today.
The United States is one of the most diverse countries on earth, jam packed full of amazing sights from St. Patrick's cathedral in New York to Mount Hollywood California.The Northeast region is where it all started. Thirteen British colonies fought the American Revolution from here and won their independence in the first successful colonial rebellion in history. Take a look at these rolling hills carpeted with foliage along the Hudson river here, north of New York City.The American south is known for its polite people and slow pace of life. Probably they move slowly because it's so hot. Southerners tend not to trust people from "up north" because they talk too fast. Here's a cemetery in Georgia where you can find graves of soldiers from the Civil War.The West Coast is sort of like another country that exists to make the east coast jealous. California is full of nothing but grizzly old miners digging for gold, a few gangster rappers, and then actors. That is to say, the West Coast functions as the imagination of the US, like a weird little brother who teases everybody then gets famous for making freaky art.The central part of the country is flat farmland all the way over to the Rocky Mountains. Up in the northwest corner you can find creative people in places like Portland and Seattle, along with awesome snowboarding and good beer. Text by Steve Smith.
