Historic Hood River
Baker’s Strawberry Farm
2-23-2016
Notes
This image from the Dewitt collection includes the caption:
WJ Baker’s strawberry acreage early 1890s or later maybe 1900. Water was pumped by steam engine from Indian Creek. House is beyond windmill.
WJ Baker is probably Pansy Dewitt’s father, William John Baker, who came to Hood River in 1886.
Category: Downtown Hood River
Tags: 1900s, agriculture, Baker, DeWitt, farm, Indian Creek, strawberries, windfill
Tags: 1900s, agriculture, Baker, DeWitt, farm, Indian Creek, strawberries, windfill
Charlott
Oh dear, brings back too many bad memories for me, as toiled in those old strawberry fields from the time I was about 8, until I just flat refused some years later. Dirty and sticky places, not to mention frying in the hot sun…..
Rawhyde
How did they keep the slugs out?
Arthur
Lots of little dishes of beer?
L.E.
Definitely frying in the hot sun with a major headache!
Here is some interesting history of W.J. Baker. It sounds like the farm was on Brookside Drive.
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~westklic/wjbarrdays.html
This article tells about Baker being the first to plant a Newton Pippin orchard in in the HR Valley in 1887.
http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071110/1922-03-09/ed-1/seq-5.pdf
I wonder if this statement is true about rural electricity:
"In fact, the first known rural electric line in the nation to bring light and power to the farmer was built in 1906 along Brookside Drive near Hood River, Oregon. It was a two-mile extension that served the farm homes of James M.
Hamblett, W. J. Baker, A. O. Hershey, W. H. Peugh and E. H. Sheppard."
http://www.oregon.gov/oprd/HCD/OHC/docs/archambault_rural_electric_0410.pdf
Charlott
Little dishes of beer………….Right………tried that once in my yard by putting it in jar lids and setting it around under various plants for slugs. Later in the day my cat was acting strangely. At first couldn’t figure out why she was stumbling around. Thought about it and went and checked those lids, not a drop of beer in any of them. One drunken cat, who went over under a tree and passed out for a long time………………her one and only experience with alcohol….
Judy
My boys all picked strawberries. Did not make much much money, but kept them busy LOL
Barbara Parsons
If they had a steam engine to pump water for them, what was the windmill for?