Historic Hood River

Notes

Jeffrey Bryant found this fine cartoon in the July 7, 1927 edition of The Hood River Glacier.  It’s a good depiction of all the events surrounding the annual American Legion climb of Mt. Hood.

Note the checkered Crag Rat shirts in the first pane, and the Crag Rat leading  the climb in the last frame.  The Crag Rats were just a year old at this point.

I was surprised to see 97 years ago they were calling coffee “Java” and joking about the “sweet essence of fried bacon.”  I guess we’re not a modern as we think.

There are plenty of fun details, like a camper using a “soft rock” for a pillow, and a climber saying, “I’m beginning to realize how far ‘up’ is.”

Unfortunately the cartoonist’s name is a bit blurred.  His first name is clearly “Lester” but his last name is something like “Martin” or “Mathis”.

I should note the cartoonist’s depiction of climbers wearing greasepaint as sunscreen might look like “blackface” but it is not.  The first modern sunscreens were a couple of years away, but early climbers made use of what they had for protection.

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