'A whale of a deal': Man recalls how family's new car was crushed by blubber in 1970

by KVAL

Thu, November 12th 2015, 11:36 PM UTC

Kelly Umenhofer said the State of Oregon footed the bill to replace the family car - and learned never to blow up a whale again.

Reporter Paul Linnman and a photographer visited the Oregon Coast on November 12, 1970. 'It had to be said the Oregon State Highway Department not only had a whale of a problem on its hands,' Linnman reported. 'It had a stinking whale of a problem.'

Officials weren't quite sure what to do with the 45-foot, 8-ton whale. They finally decided it would be best to deal with the whale in the same way they would a boulder blow it up. 'So dynamite it was, some 20 cases or a half ton of it,' Linnman reported. 'The hope was that the long-dead pacific gray whale would be almost disintegrated by the blast.'

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Kelly Umenhofer said the State of Oregon footed the bill to replace the family car - and learned never to blow up a whale again.

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