Historic Hood River
Logging Operation Circa 1925
10-25-2011
Notes
We’re lucky to have a sharp image and a complete account of what’s going on here. Look carefully and you can see everything in this description:
Loading logs on adjustable bunk rail cars. Donkey engine on right loads logs and pulls boom on spar tree over car. Bundle of short, no good logs weight pulls it back. Donkey on left is yarding logs in using spar tree as a high lead. Logs being yarded will mostly lift over stumps etc. in their path.
We also know why the well-dressed men are watching the operation. They are members of a Hood River Chamber of Commerce field trip to see this operation near Dee, about 1925.
Charlott
Wonder where they were hauling them to. Do we actually know when the first mill went in in Dee?
Russ
I believe the Dee Mill was built about 1909, so the logs would of been going there as they had the only railroad for logging in the Dee area.
l.e.
Steam engines and pulleys. Wonderful inventions of power.
That boom is fascinating.
Charlott
I bet they couldn’t fathom that there would come a day when a motorized invention could pick up and set an entire clump of logs onto another motorized vehicle for transport. As modernization progressed they were in awe…..Not that this has a thing to do with logging, but just to show how those of that era marveled as things progressed.
I have a diary written by my great-grandfather heading out for winter in California. Bridge of the Gods had just been built and opened and he mentioned it after driving past it. He could not believe that mankind could come up with something like that. He thought things like that would be impossible.
What would these men think of not only the advancement in the logging industry, but other unhead of construction marvels that have come to pass.
Kurt Patterson
Hello all,
We found the exact spot this phot was taken at a home in Dee this past week. The property owner is going to preserve the many cables we found onsite and do what he can with the rails to pay tribute to the operations conducted nearly 100 years ago!
Lynn Paden
My great grandfather was logging manager at Dee in the 1920’s. Robert Stone.
I have many photos.