Historic Hood River
I80-N
Notes
I-80N was built on top of the Columbia River Highway at Shellrock Mountain. It was later renamed I-84. You can see how little room there is to squeeze the automobile road and the railroad in that spot. The Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail has recently been squeezed into this section too.
If you look carefully at the scree slope you can see a horizontal line which marks the 1870s Dalles-Sandy Wagon Road. It’s still there, though every year falling rocks work to erase the remaining traces. Apparently that decay started soon after it was built when the railroad came through (1882).
Color prints are always challenging to reproduce. The colors fade quickly. I’ve done my best to restore the tones of this image, but some of the pigments are too far gone for the scanner to detect.
nels
And a faint view of the rock support of the abandoned highway higher up. Can you imagine taking that to Portland? I hiked up there once, and there is a reason there is no moss or greenery on those rocks – two steps up and one slide back. The road above is covered with 5 – 6" of moss, and going east it ends overlooking a rock ravine and waterfall.
ArthurB
Thanks nels, I’ll add a note about the Dalles Dandy Wagon Road.
nels
Never knew it having that name. Thanks Arthur. Was Dandy a person or a description of the road way?
And thanks for this whole wonderful site. It’s a lot of work but such an audience you have. And notes from all the people expanding on each one. Historical, and history in the making.
Got a guess as to the year model of that Chevy (?) with the long antenna?
L.E.
I bet the Indians had some scary superstition about this mountain. They supposedly said that the wind blew two directions at Wind Mtn. which is across the river from Shellrock. Sometimes when you look at the windsurfer maps, the wind arrows are pointing two directions.
Stever….do you still have the link to the lidar map of Shellrock, which shows the area of the cold wind holes? Which is odd, because across the river are hot springs, now buried under the waters of Lake Bonneville.
It is certainly an odd geological area.
starboard
That’s a typo, news, that’s the Dalles Sandy Wagon Road. The old military wagon road.
Arlen L Sheldrake
looks like a 58 chev to me….
Jim Gray
Looks Like a 64 Chevy 4dr Hardtop to me