Historic Hood River
Road Trip!
8-1-2011
Notes
By the 1920’s Oregon had a state highway system and automobiles were reliable enough for adventurous people to go on a road trip. Here’s the few solid facts we have: in 1921 a group of four people loaded up their car with a tent, supplies, a camera, and a good supply of photographic glass plates. They left behind a set of twenty beautiful images documenting a trip through the high desert country of central Oregon.
We’ll travel along with them for a little while. We may not know their names, but they’ll be our guides on this journey through time and space. We may have to be a bit creative to fill in the narrative, but history is rarely documented with precision.
Connie
I wonder if the person taking the picture belongs to the empty chair. I love seeing these early camping images…and pants on the ladies – oh, my!
l.e.
Had camp stoves been invented yet?
Wondering if they perked their coffee on an open fire.
Those canvas tents were heavy and took up lots of room.
Charlott
I don’t know about camp stoves being invented that early, but coming from an outdoor family, even after they came to be, you couldn’t beat coffee brewed over the camp fire.
Looks like they did have pretty secure tent stakes.
l.e.
Yes, I noticed the tent stake. They probably stayed more than one night when they set up camp.
Somewhere, there is a diary that accompanies these photos.
Nancy Trotic
How interesting. I have a 1921 car-trip diary written by my great-aunt Blanche Lafferty Grimm; she and her parents, brother, and son traveled from Hood River to Crescent Lake to Hilgard and back. She talks of fishing, difficult hills, a broken axle, and a great time visiting the town (Hilgard) where they had lived 20 years earlier.