Historic Hood River

Notes

This image of the old United Telephone Building at 601 State Street was taken in 1958, just before it was “absorbed” into the larger building which now houses Hood River county administrative offices.  We have a great panel of images showing how this transformation occurred, but this is the starting point.

The history of United Telephone isn’t an easy one to trace.  Early in telephone history when there were multiple competing telephone companies, and you had to have the right phone service to call someone.  This 1908 article from The Hood River Glacier mentions the Home Phone Company, Pacific States Telephone, and Hood River Farmer’s Telephone Company.  L.E. traced much of the history in this post, but there are a few links missing.  She connected dots from White Salmon Valley Telephone Company (1905) to Home Telephone and Valley Telephone (1907), and then to Oregon-Washington Telephone Company (1937).

But then we have a jump to United Telephone Company of the Northwest, which became Centurytel then Centurylink– but also Sprint and Embarq and Qwest were in the mix.  This article connects United Telephone up through Centurylink and now Lumen, but were missing the connection from Oregon-Washington Telephone Company to United Telephone– which we know happened by 1958, since this building bears the “UT” placard near the front door.

I’m sure Dale and Jim will have more fun identifying all these fine 1950s automobiles.  I can almost feel myself sinking into the enormous bench seats.

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