Historic Hood River

Notes

This image is captioned:

HOOD RIVER FRUIT GROWERS UNION. 1902 – 1903
1. LEO ULRICK, 2. NORM TOSTEVIN, 3. CLARENCE SHAW, 4. FLOYD ARNOLD, 5. EARL FRANZ, 6. HOWARD ISENBERG, 7. MRS. H. ISENBERG, 8.?, 9. CLAUDE MARKHAM, 10. E.W. SHEPARD,11.? 12. WAYNE LAKIN

The history of the Hood River Fruit Growers’ Union is complicated and confusing.  We know it was organized by 1894 from this article, and their focus appears to have been on the strawberry crop.  By 1904 they were looking to merge with the Apple Growers Union, according to this article, though this later article suggests that didn’t happen.  Within a few years there was a merger of many of these industry groups, with Davidson Fruit and others becoming the Apple Growers Association.  You can find more about all of this in this post, but the full story is still beyond my grasp.

We’ve seen some of these men before.  Earl Franz is the young guy with the label application tool.  We learned about the Tostevin family here, and we met a younger Howard Isenberg here.

I’m a little suspicious of the date since there is an electric light bulb in the view.  It’s more likely they had electricity after 1904.

Reader Interactions

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.