Today the coastal town of Port Orford holds a Fourth of July celebration called the Port Orford Jubilee that more than a century ago was known as the Agate Festival held on Agate Beach in August.
In the early 1900s, townspeople joined together to log trees and build a road to Agate Beach where the festival was held. The event featured a community smorgasbord and outdoor boxing matches. The community also teamed up to build a large tent and a wooden floor for dancing and what turned out to be very popular wrestling matches.
As the wrestling portion of the festival got underway in 1913, one wrestler, Myron Lutsey, bragged he could pin 10 men in just one hour. Lutsey was a cheesemaker from Wisconsin who had relocated to the Oregon coast. He was an accomplished wrestler, with big arm muscles developed from heavy farm work and cheese making.
Bets were taken and the boisterous onlookers cheered for their favorites, but, true to his word, Lutsey pinned all 10 competitors. And it only took half an hour.
Sources: Nelson, Shirley. Port Orford and North Curry County. Arcadia Publishing, 2010, p. 55; 鈥淐heese Notes鈥�. The American Produce Review, 3 Mar. 1903, p. 944; Ancestry, www.ancestry.com. Accessed 11 July 2019.
