Historic Hood River
“Mitchell Point Villa”
2-4-2019
Notes
Remember the Parker’s log home at “Sonny?” Here is it after the Columbia River Highway started brings lots of folks through the front yard. Note the cabins, the gas station, and the “campground”(I assume it’s the flat spot below the house). The trellis is still there.
This spot was immediately west of the Mitchell Point Tunnel entrance. Today there is a restroom, parking area, and trailhead at this spot. In the next few years the Columbia River Highway State Trail will approach this spot from the west on an existing piece of the original highway still in the woods south of the freeway.
Tomorrow I’ll show this spot a couple of years later.
Category: default
Tags: cabin, Columbia River Highway, hotel, Little Boy Ranch, Mitchell Point, motel, Sonny
Tags: cabin, Columbia River Highway, hotel, Little Boy Ranch, Mitchell Point, motel, Sonny
Kenn
These first cabins were replaced by the then modern motel in front of the house
"Sonny" and just below the rock wall that still exists. These cabins are where the present marked parking exists, the area shown in the google photo. Later photos show the gas station replaced or altered with a peaked roof.
The concrete slab for the white building in the upper left still exists. It was a generator shed for these buildings and may have been originally for the airmail beacon on Mitchell Spur.(Little Mitchell)
Arthur
The current Google street view is from 2007. The parking area has been improved since then. There is now a restroom roughly where the small shop is in this postcard.
Arlen Sheldrake
Yet another piece of our history that just blows my mind….wish my feeble brain could remember driving the Mitchell Point tunnels…not sure why driving the Mosier tunnels is remembered and not Mitchell. "airmail beacon"….more history from amazing Kenn"¦"¦..
L.E.
This is fascinating. A changing history in 100 years.
Arthur
It really has changed, L.E., and a new era will start next year with renewed construction creating a new tunnel for a very different purpose.
Tomorrow I’ll post the motel photo Kenn mentioned, along with a wonderful oral history of this spot.
nels
Changed my whole mindset forever for every time I will be driving by this place. Thanks everybody.
Beth
My grandpa, Eric Gordon, and his wife, Louise Forry Gordon, lived here and ran the gas station for a year or 2 when my Uncle Bobby was an infant- so 1923-24.
We have letters from her sisters that were written to Louise to this place.
nels
And that covered arboretum like walkway may have been built to block the view
of the campgrounds and cabins from that wonderful big house.
b.rad
My brother asked if any part of the tunnels still exists, and I said no. We just visited the Starvation Creek trailheads and waterfalls last week. However, his question led to the burning question: How did they remove the tunnels, without blocking traffic altogether while building 84?
Arthur
Brad, technically a part of the tunnel still exists: the floor or roadway. They peeled off the covering which made it a tunnel, and left a shelf which corresponds with the original roadbed.