Historic Hood River
Fun at Koberg
9-6-2013
Notes
This is one of the few images I’ve seen of Koberg Beach after the construction of Bonneville Dam. This one is dated to August 1940. You can see the towers for the transmission lines to move hydroelectric power across the river.
l.e.
It is certainly a good view of the White Salmon hills for a comparison of changes in vegetation.
I think there are more trees on those hills now.
Norma Jubitz Simpson
You can just make out the "BINGEN" sign on the hillside. I really miss that sign when I come back to Hood River. Wonder how many years it was there.
AndrewB
What happened to the sign? It must be still up there in some form.
Buzz
I wonder why you couldn’t drive a few steel piling offshore from the beach maybe 30 or 40 yards and tie a stiff leg made out of big logs to them so they could slide up and down the piling. That should keep the beach from eroding away. Then dump some sand in there and give the kids a place to swim and play.
Arthur
The modern Bonneville Pool is closely regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers, so adding or removing more than a few grains of sand involves permits and review. The city’s waterfront park took more than a year for USACE approval, and all in-water work had to be done in a narrow window when fish migration is at a minimum.
Buzz
Had the opportunity to work with the USACE a few times on reviews and permits when employed in the private sector and to issue a few permits when in the public sector. If a project was feasible economically and ecologically, they generally got done if the private or political will outweighed our natural inertia.
l.e.
I have to wonder, if this were a photo of today, how many of those youngsters would be looking at their cell phone.
Anonymous
Many years ago, on the night of a full moon, a number of friends hiked up to one of those bare areas to create a sign with vegetation. The design was a peace symbol with all the lines being drawn 10ft wide using thousands of bulbs and various seeds. It was only visible for a couple of years and I’m not sure if many people realized that it was there. This was a project that took months to coordinate. We had a system of lines that would map the symbol.