Historic Hood River
Planing Mill at Ruthton Hill, 1901
Notes
I could swear I posted this before, but I can’t seem to find it. It ties up some loose ends from previous posts.
This image was captioned “Planing Mill and Yards at Ruthton Hill, 1901 (Land leased for mill by J.W. Morton, for 99 years.) Burned in 1911.” Notes on the reverse add that Mr. Morton leased it with Mr. Davenport, the rent was $1/year, and the superintendent’s house survived the 1911 fire.
Perhaps the reason this image seems so familiar is it is a very similar view to this view of the Davenport Brothers Lumber Company. Both of them show the business end of the flume which apparently carried rough sawed logs from the Greenpoint mill. The pieces are starting to fit together: Logs cut above Greenpoint travel to Greenpoint mill by flume, then rough sawed logs travel by flume (perhaps this one) to the planing mill where they are converted to dimensional lumber and loaded onto the railroad for shipment to market.
The passenger train is speeding towards the Hood River Depot. The freight car on the siding is marked “Great Northern Railroad”.
Charlott
What is the guy doing down there on the planking or deck. Are those two little stoves and he is cooking something? Wonder what this roof thing is all about sitting on the deck.
I wonder if the man sitting on the hill is the photographer and set it up so he could be in the photo. Matthew Brady did a lot of this when he was photoing the Civil War battle sights.
Rawhyde
What happened to the flumes during the winter? Were they shut down, or did they become ice chutes?
Steve r
1 uptop ….. 4 below….. Plus 2 w four legs – Good Gorge morning all !
l.e.
A keeper for Arlen!!!
Maybe 5 below. Might be one over there under the shed with a cart.
Charlott, I think the roof looking thing allowed lumber to fall two separate ways. That way more men could work with two separate piles instead of one big one. Anyway, that’s what I decided in the previous photo.
I read that winter snow is what financially destroyed Davenport with the irrigation flumes. One year of deep snow and many of them were destroyed. Many farmers had not paid up on their original building agreement and Davenport didn’t have the capital to repair the flumes.
Arlen Sheldrake
GREAT way to start a Tuesday Arthur!!!! I wonder how long the photographer had to wait to capture all this wonderful detail. Looks like one baggage car, one combination baggage/coach and the rest passenger cars. Looks like two flumes.
This sounds like a similar operation to the one that supplied the finishing mill at Viento.
Definitely a photo worth waiting for.
spinsur
That’s the conclusion I came to from the earlier photo also, we might call that a splitter in the aggregate sampling world. As long as we’re playing "where’s waldo", I think there is another fellow up on the reject flumes, clearing a jam.
Arthur
Charlott, that’s actually a 2 wheeled hand cart with woodworking tools on it. The upright post might be a water spigot.
The man on the bluff does have a camera or a camera case under his arm, so maybe he is the photographer or his assistant.
Chasee
This is a fantastic photo! I had (mistakenly) believed this flume mainly transported logs for RR ties.
Flumes had to be shut down when temps got near freezing. Ice would destroy them and winter caused so much damage that there was a ton of maintenance to be done annually. Most companies cleared all trees that might fall or have boughs that could potentially fall on the flumes.
Longshot
I wonder if the last pitch of the flume to the board dump wasn’t waterless, but used grease to get the boards to slide. It would have been a nasty place to work if water were pouring everywhere.
You can see to the right the waste wood flume and what a haphazard pile you get without the roof like structure to help stack the boards.
There is also a water wheel in far right of the photo.
James Holloway
My Goodness! What a working deck. The raw material was boundless it seemed then. Hopefully we are learning not to exploit nature so. As the waterwheel turns……….!
nels
What are the billboard like items in the upper right?
James Holloway
Those are lean-to sheds it looks like to me. They have a steep gable pitch, so from the pictures distance they look more or less flat, like billboards! Right..?
Arthur
i think James is right– the structures in the distance seem to be sheds with steeply pitched roofs made of wood planks, just like the one in the middle of the image.
So much going on, and the photographer needed to time his shot for the speeding train.
I should have pointed out, in case anyone is confused, this mill was down by the tracks below Ruthton Park, not up by the freeway. The road is still called Morton Rd., and the tracks are in the same place. I imagine the wood came down those chutes pretty quickly given the elevation change.
Kenn
Misc, may fit in somewhere –
1927 MHNF map – a flume from Green Point reservoir to Ruthton.
1920 ONF map, what appears to be a flume from south of Defiance to "Stanley Smith mill" and on to "Oak Grove Lumber Co" at Oak Grove.
1920 – Mitchell Point mill above the present power line with a flume down to Mitchell point which I once followed board traces of.. This flume started at the top of Perham Creek and there were remains of a gasoline sawmill part way down, two model T blocks, T pedals and carriage rail last time I was there.
1909 map – "Green Point sawmill" at head of Ditch Cr SE of Defiance at "proposed reservoir site".
1931 – "Parkertown" NE of where Green Point reservoirs are now.
ellen
Kenn can you give us a link to the flume map?
Kenn
I have no link for the map but it is the Mt Hood National Forest map 1931. I also see most of it on the Oregon National Forest map 1920.
Do you have any pictures of the Nicolai mill between Ruthton and Mitchell Point "four miles from Hood River"? I have only one faint picture of it near the Columbia School, both on the river bank, and have seen steel in the rocks there. The Nicolai post office (1900-1903) was named for George Nicolai the first postmaster, name changed to Menomonee (1903-1909). Milton Galligan one time showed me the old school site and told tales of attending while crossing the river from the family home on the WA shore. I also saw the Menominee/Mitchell Point store book at the Galligan home, assume Ray Galligan still has it.