Historic Hood River
First County Museum Building
8-1-2024
Notes
It’s embarrassing this is the best image I have seen of the county’s first history museum. The chronology I’ve pieced together is this: around 1911 the Pioneer Association started collecting artifacts and photographs to preserve the regional heritage. Sometime when the county courthouse was in the Butler Bank Building (roughly 1933 to 1952) the collection was housed in the basement. According to this post in 1949 it was moved into this building behind the Butler Bank building which at one time housed the Yasui Brothers store.
Check out those stylish parking meters.
L. E.
Good thing I read the link to the Yasui Brothers Store, because I was going to ask the same question again.
“Did the Yasui Brothers have two stores?”
nels
Was this a donation in that it is rather unusual.
William C. Seaton
We moved into an apartment in the Bartmess Building in this block in 1951. The Yasui Brothers Store Building was still in this block at that time and it housed the museum. I liked the museum a lot and visited it many times. The indian bow and arrow they had on display was the item of theirs that I remember best.
kmb
What’s the purpose of the framing between the two main floor windows? Is this some kind of emergency exit? It looks odd.
Dale Nicol
@kmb, possibly an opening made to carry inside a piano?
Steffen
Arthur, I’m a bit confused here. Are you suggesting that artifacts were stored in the basement of the Butler Bank building? The Butler Bank building does not have a basement. There is what was the location of the boiler room and a vault under the sidewalk. Neither one a place for artifacts.
ArthurB
Hmmm, interesting question Steffen. My sources said “basement of the old county courthouse” but maybe that meant the one before the Butler Bank– the old schoolhouse on State Street, where Stratton Garden is now?
BethH
Our campfire Bluebird troop made a field trip to the museum and I remember going to the courthouse on State and going into the basement.
That would of been 1965-66?
ArthurB
Thanks Beth, that confirms the artifacts moved when the new courthouse was constructed in 1952. I wonder if the story I heard about the basement was confusing the oldest, old and new courthouses.