Historic Hood River
West Fork, 1910
10-29-2012
Notes
The last week of October seems like a good time for “hunting and fishing week” at Historic Hood River. As anglers and hunters have a long tradition of documenting their success, I had a lot to choose from.
This 1910 Benjamin Gifford print is identified as the West Fork of the Hood River. The Monday mystery is to identify the spot. Let us know if the fishing is still good there.
This image also offers a great view of one of the early aqueducts which provided water to the orchards in the valley below. Hopefully some of the people associated with our irrigation districts can fill in details on the history of irrigation in the valley.
l.e.
Wow…a Benjamin Gifford photo.
Does the museum have very many?
Arthur
Benjamin Gifford shot many local images and had local contracts. For example, we have two full albums of images he shot for the HR Commercial Club with images of local fruit. These are still in our "to scan" pile.
Arlen Sheldrake
Many memories of irrigation with "ditch" water from the 1950s growing up on Belmont. LOTS of silt! Chores included cleaning the silt out of the irrigation water boxes and unclogging the sprinkler heads. Never asked about where the water came from or how we paid for it…….We must have been pretty close to the end of the water supply chain but I don’t remember ever running out when we needed to irrigate.
nels
Is this site by Dee, north of the mill site?
MickiB
My first thought was by the old Dee mill site. At one time you could still see remnants along the cliff below the main plant of a structure similar to this.
MickiB
BUT-upon further peering into the picture, it does not look like the ground is a cliff part of the river and is not flat on top. Looks more like a more open area like where a creek might be entering into the West Fork.
JF
Looks like the area below Punch Bowl Falls, where the West Fork dumps into the main river. The rocky area to the left would be what is now the beach.
Nathan DeVol
I’m guessing here, but to me it looks like the WF just adjacent to the mouth of Greenpoint creek. Perhaps then that structure might have been part of the Farmers Irrigation infrastructure.
Heather
Are you sure its the west fork? This looks like an early version of the flume on the main part of the river that got replaced by Farmers here http://www.fidhr.org/images/flume-replacement-2004/index.htm
Arthur
Heather, the note identifying this as "West Fork" was added to the back of the photo relatively recently. No way to be sure the person adding the note is correct. I’m hoping someone will recognize the exact spot and send us a modern view.
Dan
This is commonly referred to as the West Fork. heather you are correct, this is the same spot where FID’s Farmers Canal crosses the river. Only back in 1910 the flume ran around the outside of the cliff. In this 2006 photo I took http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a171/dkleinsmith/HighBridge.jpg a few days after the flood event you can see that the current alignment is cut into the hillside. This location is around river mile 8 or 9
Arthur
I’ll add another one of Dan’s photos which shows he’s got the exact spot identified: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a171/dkleinsmith/DSCN1833.jpg
We’ll need to coax him into returning with a fisherman on a partly cloudy day to reproduce Benjamin Gifford’s shot.