How Salem newspapers covered Oregon’s “exploding whale” catastrophe
Wednesday marks the 55th anniversary of an unofficial Oregon holiday: Exploding Whale Day.
The now-iconic tale of hubris, dynamite and rancid blubber took place on a beach in Florence on Nov. 12, 1970.
After an eight-ton Pacific gray whale washed up on shore, engineers with the State Highway Division concocted what they thought was a sound plan: blow it up with 20 cases of dynamite.
The original plan for the carcass and the subsequent chaos made the front page in both of Salem’s newspapers, the Capital Journal and Oregon Statesman.
Clarence Zaitz, the father of Salem Reporter owner and editor Les Zaitz, was on scene reporting for United Press International.
George Thornton, assistant district engineer for the highway department, told Zaitz he wasn’t sure how much dynamite to use because he’d never blown up a whale before.
“I wanted to make sure we did the job the first time because I wouldn’t want to go back in there after it had been partially blown up,” Thornton said at the time.
But alas, it was not to be.
“The plan literally backfired,” read an Associated Press report in the Nov. 13, 1970, edition of the Oregon Statesman. “When the charge was detonated the whale flew in every direction at once. Chunks of blubber sailed high over the heads of spectators and photographers and one piece, some five feet long and three feet wide, caved in the roof of a car owned by Walter S. Unenhofer of Springfield. It was parked a quarter mile away.”
It was an on-scene report by KATU’s Paul Linnman, however, that cemented the day as the stuff of Oregon legend.
“The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere,” he reported from the beach.
Unenhofer, the unlucky observer with a smashed car, was quoted as saying, “My insurance company is never going to believe this.”
Fortunately, it didn’t have to.
Unenhofer “reported Monday that he has received a check in full from the state for the full value of his 1969 Oldsmobile,” the Capital Journal reported on Nov. 24, 1970.
The amount of the “whale refund” wasn’t included.
Correction: This article listed the date of the exploding whale incorrectly in one reference. Salem Reporter apologizes for the error.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers education, economic development and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for over a decade and is a past president of Oregon's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Outside of work, you can often find her gardening or with her nose buried in a book.
