Historic Hood River
View from the Tower
1-28-2026
Notes
We’ve seen so many views including the water tower at A. I. Mason’s Liberty Home Orchard, now we finally have a view looking back the other way. Notes say, “from tower– looking at Floyd and Elsie’s house.” Floyd and Elsie were A. I. and Ollie’s son and his wife.
Can someone help sort out the exact location? I’m having trouble figuring out which road that is and which way the camera is pointing. By the way, I’ve found a note in one album the tower was 85 feet tall and the tank held 5000 gallons of water.
LWH
Mason Road looking south with Van Horn Butte on the top left?
JKG
Yep, that’s exactly where it is LWH. The white house in the bottom right is where Wells & Sons Packing House sits.
L.E.
Oh…Charlott would have loved this.
Arthur Babitz
L.E., can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to send her an email with a question like this!
William C. Seaton
Oh, yes,…I too miss Charlott’s comments!
Kalley
I too miss Charlott’s comments. When she and her daughter moved back to the valley from Sherwood, she worked for us at Mid Valley Market in Odell. She was a wonderful employee and always knew so much history.
Maureen Wells
The camera is facing south, and, yes, that is Mason Road with the Pine Grove/Van Horn Butte in the background. In the mid ground is George and Faith Ackerman’s home (I don’t know who the previous owners were – Floyd and Elsie, or maybe they lived in the white house on bottom right?). The white house on the bottom right is still there, a Wells and Sons tenant house, and the current warehouse sits north of it.
You can’t clearly see it, but Mason Road goes over the railroad tracks and heads south toward Van Horn Road. The large warehouse – looking building is gone now, where railroad ties are currently stored.
The next building also remains, and if you look really closely, you can see the house that is now beautifully decorated at Christmas time for the benefit of travelers on the Mount Hood Railroad. I don’t know who the original owners were..
L. E., you are absolutely right, Charlott would have loved this!
Kalley, she also worked at Wells and Sons, packing for a number of years, as did her mother, Wanda Wells, before her.
Chase DeBoard
Wow!
In the picture , that big ol building has the railroad on one side & road on the other side in the picture.
Nowadays, Essentially that modern triangle between the two crossings of Mason/railroad.
With the road & railroad running inside perimeter of this building now & old track bed off to the side
Like this explains so much and why in my research I found like 2-3 different routes for Mason in that section, same with 2-3 slightly different railroad routes along the location of that big ol building.
Pine Grove is unique in an early agricultural western town, being the railroad arrived after intial street & industry development.
So the railroad followed road realignments & industries, rather then the latter two following the railroad.
I’m amazed at the amount road building & change in early Pine Grove.
Oh! Another cool!
StoryBook Glade (house the railroad decorates for Christmas)
They musta moved the house south west off the hill on to Mason.
Cause in this picture that house is way higher in elevation then “older” “old”, and “new” Mason.
That
I had difficulty in finding the StoryGlade house in old pictures.
Cause where that house sit now it had a street & railroad running through the property.
Also I know that property has moved, because the house currently sits in a soggy muddy spot now that the lawn gets your shoes wet easy.
Before the modern storybook glade property, until the late 20’s or early 30’s still had a leftover old road that cut diagonally through it and continued through the AGA (TFC) property & connected to Van Horn street sorta where the Grange use to sit.
Omg, that explains why people kept telling me was one of the older houses in the Valley & I was confused I couldn’t find it in old photos in the modern location
Appears they generally lowered/flattened a lot of ground between Mason and Van Horn Butte as well.