The exploding whale is a piece of Oregon lore that just won鈥檛 go away. It鈥檚 one of those real-life stories that just sounds too strange to be real. But it most definitely happened and was there.
鈥淚t was an exciting day for me because I was a new reporter for The Register-Guard,鈥� Bacon said. 鈥淚 had probably [worked there] about a month, and it was an exciting story.鈥�
: On Nov. 9, 1970, a 45-foot, 8-ton dead sperm whale washed up on the shore of the coastal town of Florence, Oregon. It was huge. It was stinky. And it needed to be gone yesterday.
Back then the coast was managed by the State Highway Division, and agency officials figured the best way to get rid of the immovable mammal was by blowing it up with half a ton of dynamite. The thought was those highway officials would remove the whale the same way they removed any other large obstruction, Bacon said.
鈥淭hey were going to remove it like it was a big boulder on the highway,鈥� Bacon said. 鈥淭hey were going to blow the whale to pieces, out toward the sea, and the fish and seagulls would eat most of it.鈥�
That plan was a spectacular failure. And it didn鈥檛 help that highway engineers didn't provide a countdown before detonation on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 12, 1970, said Bacon.
鈥淎ll of a sudden there was this hundred-foot geyser of blood, blubber and sand going up into the sky,鈥� Bacon said. 鈥淚t was like a blubber snowstorm with tiny particles of blubber floating down after the big chunks.鈥�
Bacon said the few dozen spectators and reporters who came to watch the blast from what they thought was a safe quarter-mile distance away began screaming and running away. But how do you run away from stinky, blubber rain?
Luckily no one reported any explosion-related injuries, but one car did get its roof smashed in by a three-foot chunk of whale that fell from the sky. Bacon鈥檚 car was parked next to it.
The worst part, according to Bacon, . It lingered with the onlookers for days.
鈥淧eople were retching,鈥� Bacon said. 鈥淚t stuck to your clothes and everything.鈥�
What might be the hardest part to believe in this story is that the engineer behind the blast, George Thornton, thought the effort was a success.
鈥淚t was kind of funny because I interviewed him afterward, and he said it went exactly right,鈥� Bacon said. 鈥淓xcept, the dynamite cases funneled down into the sand and directed the explosion straight up.鈥�
It鈥檚 safe to say that state officials learned their lesson from this historic event. State policy now is to bury, not blow up, dead whales that end up on the beach.
The legend of flying whale bits is an enduring one. That鈥檚 thanks, in part, to
like Bacon who first reported the story.
, of course. Plus, the fine folks of Florence voted last year to commemorate the whole thing by naming its
after the explosion. (It鈥檚 open now, and you can enjoy a picnic while contemplating exploding whales there.)
But, in Bacon鈥檚 opinion, this story continues to live on for one reason: It is just so unbelievably bizarre.
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