Two guys from Oregon

[Bill in Oregon]

Pete's knife thread got me remembering two men I chanced to meet at small gun shows in Oregon years ago:

Rex Applegate was a native Oregonian, and a descendant of an illustrious pioneer family that left a river, a valley and an important wagon route -- the Applegate Trail -- to the Oregon country. It left the main Oregon Trail at Fort Hall in Idaho, turned south and cut across northern Nevada then turned north in Northern California to Oregon, avoiding the dangerous float down a section of the Columbia, in which some of the Applegate children drowned in 1843. Rex's daughter Shannon is a beloved Oregon historian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Applegate

Chuck Karwan and his wife eventually settled in Douglas County, Oregon, after many years of bouncing around the country and the world. I met him at a couple of gun shows, and he was always friendly and eager to talk about weird surplus weapons that he had written about -- and I had read about. A fine American.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySLanmhzcHM

[marlinman93]

Rex was a legend far beyond Oregon for his early days of training OSS agents, and others later in law enforcement. But I've always been secretly pretty proud he was a fellow Oregonian. I met Rex through a friend who was also involved in spy stuff with the CIA during Vietnam era. Rex was a real guy, and every bit butt real as his legend.

[octagon]

Thanks for that link bill, been carrying the big Applegate folder for ten years horizontally. Love it