Historic Hood River
Fun with the Thomsons
Notes
This is a good example of why I’ve been having so much fun looking through the Thomson family album. They always seem to be having fun, there’s often a local background, and there’s always lots of detail to enjoy. The album seems to be strictly chronological, covering a period from 1912 to 1935 as best as I can tell, so I date this one to early 1910s.
I think that’s the Mt. Hood Railroad bridge across the Hood River.
We don’t know who these folks are, but they are at the Mt. Hood Railroad bridge across the Hood River (east end) and they’re having a good time. While it’s a little hard to make out, the man to the left is pointing with his pipe. He looks like a reasonable match for Claude Thompson as seen in this 1907 8th grade class photo from the Barrett School, though I don’t think he was even related to George Thomson.
I’m not sure what the rifle is for.
BethH
Looks like a big rock wall on the other side…. Does the west side of the Hood River look like that down there? Maybe somewhere else in the gorge….?
The gun for shooting critters- protect the lady- ha!- she may be able to shoot and smoke that pipe while styling that hat- better than them!
Definitely look like they are having fun
nails
Back as late as the 1970’s it was the norm in the midwest at least, to go out ‘shooting chippies’. Sort
of a target practice thing. So I got the local mill to cut me some wood and had the classroom assemble bird houses while talking about the value of birds.
nails
Are picture albums kept together or do you disassemble them?
Arthur
Good question nails, every album is different but it’s generally important to preserve the context, especially with an album like this which is chronological. This one had a few loose images but most are securely glued in place so I just left it as it was with the entire album in a single sleeve. While the photos may slowly degrade with age and acid paper, by limiting handling we can expect it to last a good long time.
Arthur
BethH, I checked it out a few weeks ago and with the right lens the background to the MHRR bridge does look like this. Old cameras make the background objects look impressively large compared to reality.
nails
I am dealing with photo albums also, and wondering if some kind of paper should be placed in the pages to delay deterioration.
L.E.
Shooting graydiggers?
JEC
Apparently the MHRR never saw the need for guard rails on this bridge, like the ones on the UPRR bridge we saw in the “Two Gauges?” post.
Arthur
Nails, if you’re worried about the stability of the pages of your album I would suggest putting each page in a transparent archival sleeve individually, then putting the pages in a ring binder. That’s what we did with the AI Mason album, which was more fragile than the Thomson album,