Historic Hood River
Harry DeWitt and Maltie Dukes
5-13-2014
Notes
Here are Harry DeWitt and Maltie Dukes walking a log in the Columbia circa 1904. Notes indicate it was by the location of the interstate bridge with Bingen in the background.
Between about 1900 and 1906 this was the location of the Lost Lake Lumber Company. The fluctuating levels of the Columbia River as well as the difficulty getting logs down the Hood River caused them to move up to Dee in 1906.
Buzz
Read where the mill processed 300,000 bd. ft./day. Although volume can vary a great deal, a rough estimate of 5,000 bd. ft./load on a highway logging truck today, would require 60 truck loads/day to supply the mill. A lot of wood. No one-horse outfit.
spinsur
A lot of wood, and no power saws or diesel skidders! Note the axe marks on the butt of the log showing sweep, right center of photo.
l.e.
So the mill must be to the right?
From previous photos we have known Harry DeWitt as a car salesman, but he did own the HR Box Factory for a while so he must have had some interest in lumber also.
Maltie Dukes must be connected with Dukes Valley?
Buzz
Axe marks are from cutting a "face" in the tree to get it to fall in a certain direction–hopefully. Good timber fallers could "drive a stake in the ground" by falling a tree right where they wanted to put it.
l.e.
Henry Maltimore Dukes also appears in photo #573 along with his sister Agnes and his father Captain J.H. Dukes.
Probably not connected to Dukes Valley since they came to HR in 1886
In 1907 he married Mabel Cockrell.
L.E.
The January 9, 1903 HR Glacier:
Harry DeWitt, recently from Portland, is assistant book-keeper in the office of the Davenport Bros. Lumber Co. in Hood River.
L.E.
In 1904 Harry DeWitt is married to Georgiana (Pansy) Baker DeWitt. In April 1904, Pansy’s 14 year old brother Kenneth drowned in a high water slough just below the train depot. He fell from his horse while driving some cows.
Maltie Dukes was one of the first on the scene and attempted to search for Kenneth in the cold water.
The obituary and story of the event can be found in the HR Glacier April 21, 1904 page 2.
Eric Schmidtke
Henry M Dukes was my great-grandfather! I’ve never seen these photos before, so thanks for posting them! After Henry passed away at an untimely age (1918 flu?), Mabel and the family (three girls and one boy) moved into Portland, where they lived for two more generations. My grandmother was his daughter Marian Ursula "Binnie".