Oregon's highway crew tried to blow up a whale with half a ton of dynamite
On this day · 12 November 1970
On November 12, 1970, engineers reasoned that a rotting whale was basically a very large boulder. The blubber disagreed.
A 45-foot sperm whale weighing about 8 tons had washed up near Florence, Oregon, and by November 12, 1970 it was ripe enough to be a problem. The beach fell under the Oregon Highway Division, whose engineer George Thornton decided to treat the carcass like a boulder and remove it with half a ton of dynamite, trusting gulls to clean up the scraps.
The blast sent a geyser of blood, sand, and blubber skyward. Chunks rained down across the dunes; one piece flattened the roof of a parked Oldsmobile a quarter mile away. Spectators who had been moved back for safety ran from falling whale.
Reporter Paul Linnman called it “a blubber snowstorm.”
Worst of all, much of the whale simply stayed put, and crews ended up burying it by hand. The footage became one of the internet’s first viral clips decades later, and in 2020 locals named a park after the fiasco.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
