Historic Hood River
AGA Buildings, circa 1940?
Notes
I was researching the history of the Apple Growers’ Association and ran across this image showing the conveyor which used to cross Columbia at 5th. This matches the configuration in the 1942 Sanborn Map. This building is now part of Full Sail Brewing Company.
The Apple Growers’ Association was formed in 1913 when Horatio Davidson worked with three other major packers in the valley to combine into the Apple Growers’ Association to more effectively market Hood River fruit nationally and internationally.  Davidson had been central to the “disunion” of the Hood River Fruit Growers’ Union when he formed Davidson Fruit in 1897, so this consolidation marked a major shift in fruit marketing for the valley.
Hopefully someone can narrow down the date of this image based on the automobiles.
Tags: 1940s, AGA, Apple Growers Association, Columbia Street, Davidson, Davidson Fruit Company, Diamond Fruit
Dale Nicol
Arthur, I think that the first car in the line up gives the best clue as to when the photo was taken. Prior to 1940, most GM cars had the headlights mounted as in the 2nd and 3rd cars. The auto designers were transitioning to making the headlights part of the fender and make them “sleeker or more aerodynamic” .
The real exception was Chrysler with the Airflow in 1934. The headlights were built into the body next to the grill, but not the fenders.
The first car appears to have the headlights emerging out of the fenders.
I can’t get a good enlargement of that car but the partial view of the grill is somewhat similar to a 1940 Buick.
Rountree Rouse
Hi Arthur- My dad took this video of our drive down to get pizza at Andrew’s in April 1992 from our first house on 9th Street. The conveyor structure is visible at about halfway point as we drive up Columbia (past our first Pageworks office and the White Cap Brew Pub).
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sdiicpifwpzslnfwsz26c/Drive_Thru_Hood_River_Apr_1992.mp4?rlkey=eubt4cabmc6ju050nb2rxa53j&dl=0
JEC
At the time of this photo this conveyor and the one in Rountree Rouse’s video would have carried boxes of packed fresh fruit from the Cascade packing house to the Union building where they would have been kept in cold storage and eventual loading into refrigerated rail cars. The similar overpasses that carried them over Industrial Street had been removed by the time of RR’s video. The conveyors passed through the cannery building, the one extending from the one in the video entered the Union building between rooms 305 and 306 and connected to the conveyors in that building. The overpass that carried the conveyor in today’s photo over Industrial street was later repurposed to carry a different kind of conveyor, one which delivered empty cans to the cannery building from a room on the bottom floor of the west end of the Union building.
After the packing house was transferred to the cannery peeling and sorting operations were done in the packing house building, then ready to can fruit was floated in water flowing through the overpass in the video.
BethH
Wow! What a trip back in time! Loved driving the streets of Hood River, I wanted him to go all over. Thanks Roundtree Rouse. My Dad used an 8mm camera for years than up graded as they became more available. Our family is well documented- early years with no sound- so we make up what we are saying!
I wish my Dad had done more of the streets of Parkdale.
James
Thanks Roundtree for that video. I so enjoyed the ‘92 drive thru sleepy wet HRiver. As Beth said, such a ‘blast from the past’…, I could take more of that…
JEC
The truck peeking into the photo on the right may be resting on the truck scale that used to be in front of the cannery building. The scale “house” was built into the building on the floor represented by the bottom row of windows, when the scale operator was standing at the scale controls the scale deck was more or less at chest height.
kyle
I watched that video sitting in the modern day offices of Full Sail, with some coworkers. Was fun to see our block in detail, and the early pub!