Historic Hood River
Driving the Last Spike
6-26-2012
Notes
According to the caption and notes on the reverse, this is Leslie Butler driving the last spike in the Hood River- White Salmon Interstate Bridge on December 6, 1924. Mr. Butler was the senior member of the Butler Bank Company. It must have been a special year for him, as he also got to open the Butler Bank Building on Oak Street that same year. Bad times were just a few years ahead, as the bank succumbed to the Great Depression in 1932.
Category: default
Tags: 1920s, bridge, Butler, Hood River White Salmon Interstate Bridge, road construction
Tags: 1920s, bridge, Butler, Hood River White Salmon Interstate Bridge, road construction
Charlott
Noticed immediately the decking. Bet that was fun when it was icy.
Looks like some sort of officer there for "crowd control."
Wonder what gave Butler the honor of driving the last spike? No doubt had something to do with money and his bank.
Charlott
Leslie Butler was born in Randolph, Indiana in 1847. Came first to The Dalles. He died here in 1944. His wife was Carrie Bixler and they were the parents to Truman who was in the banking business in H. R. with his father.
l.e.
Just yesterday I was reading about the Great Stock Market crash of October 1929. The 1920’s were good years for the U.S. Peaceful and economically abundant.
They were definitely good years for the White Salmon/Hood River people when this bridge was completed.
I am surprised the word Interstate is used, since it was a privately owned bridge. There were people here in Glenwood who owned stocks in the bridge.
Are they in the center of the bridge? Are people from both sides standing behind him?
Notice the suits, overcoats, fur coats and work coveralls.
Longshot
They are probably standing in the middle of the bridge where the lift span is today. The original bridge deck had to be raised and the lift span added when Bonneville Dam went in during the 1930’s raising the water level.
Butler looks pretty old and frail in that picture, it is amazing he made it another 20 years.
db
Isn’t the bridge now called the Button Bridge? If so, when did the name change?
spinsur
buttons owned the property around what is now the hwy 35/hwy 30 junction, china gorge area. button bridge was a wooden bridge over the railroad, and is now the curving overpass over the railroad from china gorge/tum a lum to the freeway.
db
Ah, now that makes sense, although I’m afraid the spam immediately above doesn’t.
Jeffrey Bryant
Parts of the old Button Bridge live on. My Dad, Bob Bryant, salvaged some of the beams and used them when he built Hood River Nursery on Tucker Road in the early 1970’s.
Arthur
Jeffrey– We have a nice image of the old Button Bridge coming up soon.
l.e.
That frail looking little guy lived to be 97 years old.
Jeffrey…..I see that one of Buttler’s daughters married a Vaughn. Any relation to your family, or is that the wrong spelling?
An interesting biography of Leslie Butler.
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~westklic/lbutler.html
Jeffrey Bryant
Hood River News articles about the Interstate Bridge can be found at:
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~westklic/wacomabridge.html
Leslie Butler, was chairman of the board of directors of the bridge
Jeffrey Bryant
Carrie Butler married Carlton Hamilton Vaughan, who was a banker for the Butler Banking Company. I am not related to him.
Charlott
You must keep in mind that the Hood River-White Salmon Bridge has been greatly altered over the years. This is definitely that bridge and not what you are referring to as the Button Bridge. There are photos already posted for you to see what the bridge looked like over the Hood River near where the Button farm was.
L.E.
Reading through the news articles posted by Jeffrey, I came across this report:
“……Leslie Butler, chairman of the board of trustees of the bridge company, drove the last spike. Butler, who was formerly a member of the state highway commission, is 77 years old, but his former experience as a bridge builder enabled him to drive the spike without missing one stroke with the big sledge hammer…..”
Jeffrey Bryant
This photo was in the Hood River Glacier, 1924-12-11, page 5. Page 1 has the article about opening the bridge.
https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071110/1924-12-11/ed-1/seq-1/
Jeanie Senior
The Butlers lived in the Victorian house just west of the Hood River County building, which earlier was the Oregon-Washington Telephone building. Marian Butler and my mother-in-law, Janet Slade Senior, were friends. Janet was born in 1904, I imagine Marian was close to her age. Marian moved to the Bay area and in the 1960s was working at Gumps, a fancy store in San Francisco.