Historic Hood River
Columbia Gorge Highway Bridge at Hood River
10-10-2013
Notes
I normally wouldn’t bother to share such a badly damaged negative with you, but I think this captures an important moment in history. We’re standing on the newly constructed Columbia River Highway bridge over the Hood River, looking at construction of the highway up towards Button Junction. You can see the steam powered equipment on the grade up from the bridge. I think that dates this image to 1919- 1920. (ed. note: This image has been heavily Photoshopped to bring out what was an almost unreadable negative)
Category: default
Tags: 1920s, Alva Day, automobile, bridge, Columbia River Highway, Hood River Bridge, Mosier, steam
Tags: 1920s, Alva Day, automobile, bridge, Columbia River Highway, Hood River Bridge, Mosier, steam
l.e.
That area is such a hub of business and conglomeration of buildings that it is kind of nice to sit back and quietly look at this photo.
Even if it is hard to see much.
I’m trying to figure out the second building. It is built like a barn, but appears to have a large chimney.
The closest home looks like it could be built from logs.
l.e.
That is Alva Day’s wife Io standing beside the car.
Arlen Sheldrake
Thanks for saving this poor but worthwhile image Arthur.
longshot
Just a cupola on the barn supposedly for ventilation, but I suspect it was mostly for looks in the days of wooden shingles laid over wide spaced purlins as air could escape most anywhere in the roof structure.
Judy
I see someone is sitting on the "railing". You have done very well with this heavily damaged negative.
l.e.
Arthur, how did the museum obtain all of these Alva Day photos? Were they donated by a family member?
longshot, I enlarged the photo and can easily see now that it is a cupola. Remember, back in those days, someone was standing on a pile of loose hay at the top of a hot barn stacking each load of loose hay that was brought in.
They needed some good ventilation.
Barn owls liked those cupolas.
Arthur
l.e., not sure how the museum acquired the Alva Day collection. I believe it’s been at the museum for a long time, possibly before they kept good records of acquisitions. When Matt and I first saw it, it was in a big shoe box, thick wads of negatives bound together with rotting rubber bands, and a bunch of white envelopes labelled "1917" through "1955" that someone had attempted to sort some of the negatives into by year. Now all 2500+ negative are numbered, scanned, indexed by keyword, and preserved in archival sleeves. I tested the system the other day by generating a virtual album of the 1927 American Legion climb in just a few keystrokes.
Arthur
If you want to see the raw scan, I’ve uploaded it to flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33624788@N05/10202310215/sizes/l/
Kimberly
Enjoying this photo blog. I have found loads of treasures from my grandma’s collection including the Boormans, Millers and Burns family of Hood River. All early settlers of Hood River. Exciting!
Connie
As far as I have been able to figure out, the Alva Day collection was gifted to the Historical Society by Alva himself. This would have been prior to the current museum building existing. It was stored in the attic of the museum building and was re-discovered when we emptied that space in preparation for the building renovation.
Lorraine Carlstrom
That barn is now Treebird Market(Mother’s Market before that). Harry English bought the property from the Button’s in the 1950’s and he took the top floor off the barn and moved it near the house. We bought the property from Harry in 1988. The "barn" has had many businesses in it over the years.