Historic Hood River
Davidson Box Factory
Notes
Today’s subject is the parking lot behind the Elks Lodge. We know the story of the 1904 fire at the Davidson Box factory on that site that helped Horatio Davidson advocate for Hood River to purchase a chemical engine and form a fire brigade. We know he then built the concrete Davidson Building on Cascade, and started constructing the Union Building on Industrial. I thought that box factory was the last structure to occupy that site, but that’s not quite right. It turns out Davidson rebuilt his box factory on the site, and it lasted for a couple of years– enough time to be captured in this image.
We previously saw this image of the box factory. Today’s image from the Davidson Copper Collection matches that one, and also matches the Sanborn layout of a building which was built by 1905 and gone by 1916. The layout of this second box factory was similar to the one that burned in 1904, but had enough differences we can be confident this is the post-1905 building. The detached shed to the left is clearly documented in the Sanborn maps as something built between 1905 and 1909.
This means the lot behind the Elks Lodge apparently has only been vacant since sometime between 1909 and 1916, not since the 1904 fire. This may not seem like a major distinction, but as it’s part of the HRFD origin story I like to get the details right. You may recall this is the same lot which Alva Day used to store power poles to electrify the valley, so despite not having any structures for all these years it still has played a part in our history.
Horatio Davidson is third from the right in this image, just to the left of the oak tree.
The image below isn’t from the same angle, but it’s of the same spot. Today’s image was taken from the location of the Elks Lodge looking NNE.
Tags: 1900s, box, box factory, Davidson, Davidson Fruit Company, fruit packing
L. E.
It seems like every mill during that time was a fruit box factory.
The Harris brothers of Milton Freewater, over by Walla Walla had a lumber mill here in Klickitat County. They shipped the lumber by rail to Milton Freewater to manufacture fruit boxes.
kmb
Our old friend Maltie Dukes worked at a box factory, I believe it would have been the Davidson box factory. From the Oct. 1, 1897 Hood River Glacier: “Maltie Dukes met with a serious accident in the box factory on Thursday of last week. He was operating the machine that gouges the hand holes in the end of the crates, when a crate board broke and his right hand came in contact with the knife and was badly lacerated. His hand was dressed by Dr. Watt, who found it necessary to amputate the little finger at the second joint.” Ouch!!