Historic Hood River
Hardboard Plant, 1956
2-4-2022
Notes
This image is captioned “1956, Hardboard Plant Showing.” A note on the reverse says “plant built 1951 before settling pond.” It looks like business is good. There are plenty of logs waiting to be processed and plenty of finished lumber waiting to ship. The Dee townsite looks fully populated, and the dam is still intact.
dale nicol
This is a great historic aerial photo!
James
Ohh, us Humans, we sure know how to plunder the environment, if only we knew how to refurbish, resurrect…?
Basaltgrouse
The big building in the middle closest to the bridge were the only buildings that remained in the mid 90's when I worked there for a few years. Everything else was gone or replaced. The dam and the saw mill building were gone and the powerhouse was replaced. Those remaining buildings burned in November 96 when the roof collapsed in a snow storm.
Basaltgrouse
I don't believe that any of the buildings that remain today are in this image except for the water tower if it is still standing and some remains of the dam but I have not actually been to the site for a few years.
Ken
Smells like $$$ to me!
…as Dad used to say.
L.E.
Yes business looks good. The “baby boomer” era. The U.S. economy was good. The GI Bill was in place. Housing was affordable. California building was booming and buying Oregon lumber.
People had jobs and they worked. “Gyppo” outfits sprang up throughout the PNW.
Rosa Parks didn't move from her seat. The Cold War and Rock'n'Roll music.
What an interesting decade.
Jeff Bryant
I notice the wig-wam burner.
kmb
The group of homes we can see in the upper center of the picture, that was the Dee townsite? And it is no more today? Until I saw this picture, I didn't realize that Dee was only a tiny local hamlet attached to the mill, for the mill workers. Anyone know what the peak population would have been in Dee, and around what years?
Dennis
My dad's business re-roofed these buildings. His crew was made up of myself, many of my high school friends, a foreman and my dad. We had a lot of fun but it was hot ,hard work. We had to climb up and down a forty foot ladder many times a day.
We had several close calls of falling off the roof.
Great memories
The crew roofed over a hundred homes and buildings in the valley as my friends and I completed high school and college.
Arlen L Sheldrake
interesting post Dennis…..your last name?