Historic Hood River
First School at Mt. Hood
6-5-2013
Notes
According to photo notes this was the first schoolhouse at Mt. Hood. It was located in the midst of large pine trees 1000 ft. SE of the present concrete bridge across the Hood River on land of D.R. Cooper. Carrie Graham was the first school teacher. It was built in 1884.
Lou Baldwin built the next school (one room, 8 grades) sometime prior to 1900. He was paid $200 in ten and twenty dollar gold pieces.
l.e.
Looks like there are some gaps in the logs that need chinking.
I wonder if that is the outhouse in the background.
charlott
Certainly doesn’t have a foundation. Quite a feat of construction I would think, keeping everything level as they went up. Wonder if that is the shed out back or an outhouse?
Kated
I believe that Ezra Smith funded a school to be built on the west side, near Frankton Road prior to 1900.
Rawhyde
Using a historic cost calculator, $200 in 1900 would be the equivalent of $5,432 today.
I’m not sure you could a commercial grade, fire rated, handicap accessible front door for that today.
R Hyde
Looked at another way, if the materials for a $5,432 school were donated, and you paid the contractor $50 per hour to build it, he/she would have to finish the building in thirteen and a half days (by themselves).
l.e.
He didn’t peel the logs, but he did notch them.
Maybe he is the one who cut the shakes for the roof.
If he had to transport those two windows clear to the Cooper place, that would have been an ordeal.
That pipe looks pretty skinny for a chimney, but maybe he had to put in a wood stove.
Lesa
I wonder if the students had to trudge five miles, up hill both ways, in the snow to school, as my grandpa used to claim. He was certainly a card.
I figured in order for him to do that, he must have lived on a hill, with a valley between, and the school sitting on a second hill. It’s the only way he could have climbed a hill both ways. But I think he was being a wiseacre instead, which was more his style.
Buzz
Lesa, my dad must have lived right beside your grandpa and went to the same school. The only difference was my dad had to do it barefoot.
Lesa
Did he have one pair of suspenders, he had to share with his three older brothers?! Which meant he got to wear them maybe once or twice a week, the rest of the time he had to tie his trousers up with a rope?! And when the seat of his pants wore out, the only fabric they had, was from an old feed sack, so she sewed it onto his britches.
Lesa
His grandma was the sewer, that is. He said, "She could do more things with a burlap needle, and a ball of twine, than most anybody he ever knew, but, sittin on them stitches, was somethin else."
Lesa
"My dad used to say, when he went to school, his lunch was a cold pancake, in the bottom of a metal bucket." That was my husbands comment, after reading this over my shoulder.
Buzz
My dad was so poor when he was in school, the only pet he ever had was a tumbleweed.
Charlott
My Dad would never allow peanut butter sandwiches in our house, as he said that every day for many many years when he opened his lunch pail that peanut butter sandwich was staring him in the face. So we didn’t grow up on peanut butter and jelly.
l.e.
My dad went to a two room school and he said you couldn’t move to the "big room" until you learned your times tables.