Historic Hood River
Home Builders, Don and Rex
4-25-2012
Notes
By 1898 the Masons built a second home, and in 1900 they had a son, Thomas Floyd. The growing family apparently needed a third home. Don and Rex must have been an important part of the process, as they hog the photo credit. That’s probably Thomas sharing the frame with Don and Rex, placing this image at about 1904. Ollie is on the ladder and it’s starting to look like a real orchard.
Charlott
Thomas Floyd was always known as Floyd. Naturally he would grow up on the Mason ranch. Apparently he as an adult at least by the 1950’s he was an insurance agent, living up on what is called High Line Road,. He was a very large man as I recall. He was a very active member in the Pine Grove Grange.
Don and Rex are hauling the fruit, as you can see a sled behind them with boxs on it. They must be picking apples in a bucket as you see one sitting behind Floyd.
It appears that they may have cleared some land, put in an orchard and then later cleared another portion as we see on the left a young plot of fruit trees.
A team of good working horses was the mainstay in farmers ability to survive.
l.e.
My goodness, what a change from yesterday’s photo. A lot of hard physical labor to create this end result, which still involves plenty of hard, physical labor.
Any idea how old these trees are.
Beautiful team of horses.
Charlott
If they bought this land in 1896 and the trees are in production are the first part of their orchard I am guessing and only that that the trees are somewhere in the vicinity of 6 years old. Floyd was born in 1900 and he is 2 or 3 years old. I would think that that small orchard would be somewhere around 3 years old.