Historic Hood River
Davidson Fruit Company
9-20-2012
Notes
This early view of the Davidson Fruit operations in Hood River dates from about 1900. By 1905 Horatio Davidson had helped create the “Apple Growers Association”. The wooden building in the foreground would be gone very soon, and the brick “Union Building” was greatly extended.
This image shows the same view just a few years later.
charlott
Just goes to show how many strawberries were produced in the Hood River Valley in the early years.
I guess you could purchase ice there next door…
The brick portion was the cold storage as it says ice factory and if you notice in the wooden building there are no doors to load into trains. I am thinking the wooden building was more or less of a packing portion of the operation.
Love seeing that old train. Don’t think any child of the Gorge didn’t have fascinations with trains as they went back and forth between Hood River and Portland. Remember there weren’t the big semi-trucks taking fruit to the stores and docks for export. Those old trains went back and forth day and night moving products. Can still hear them and smell them, as we rolled down the windows when we rolled along one. The engineer ALWAYs waved…..
Jim Gray
The Ice factory during that era was also used for loading ice into the special freight cars that hauled fruit, meat anything that must be kept cool, the ice hatches were on top at each end.
Arlen Sheldrake
GREAT photo of an early OR&N passenger train! I would like to have heard the conversation with the sign painter. Father John L. told stories of guiding the large blocks of ice into the reefers that preceeded mechnical refrigerated cars.