Historic Hood River
Oak Street Circa 1900
3-13-2014
Notes
This isn’t from the Blythe collection, but it fits this week’s theme. This is from the Bartmess collection, and it has just enough context to be sure the building is Columbia Hall on Oak Street at Second Street (NE Corner). We previously saw Spanish American War soldiers parading past this spot in this image.
Charlott
Another good photo of how hard of a life they lived.
Wonder if that blanket might be one made by the Indians? Looks somewhat like ones I have seen in other photos.
You want to just grab that poor little guy and hug him.
Charlott
Can anyone tell what the box on the right says?
l.e.
Her moccasins are wet.
She doesn’t seem opposed to having her photo taken.
I wonder if this could be Mary that carried the mail up and down the river with her husband for so many years.
Was it common for stores to have the window curtains on the outside?
spinsur
might be an awning that folds flat to the building?
l.e.
We will have to wait for Steve to tell us about the box Charlott. He can probably see what is inside of it.
I am rather intrigued by the hole under the steps. I wonder how many skunks and cats lived under their.
So…this is where Franz Hardware and Shortt Supply are located?
Norma Jubitz Simpson
Makes me wonder what year the Franz Building was built. My dad’s family bought the hardware store (Franz Furniture was next door) in 1937. Much improvement since 1900.
charlott
It was Martha Aleck and her husband Joe that carried the mail. Remember it was Martha’s two children that drown crossing the river with her when she was bringing the fish back to the Hood River side. I think that this woman would have been much younger than Martha.
Buzz
I’m inclined to believe this young lady has a caucasian ancestor in her family tree in the not too distant past.
l.e.
Lewis and Clark wrote that the Indians in this area and east of here on the Columbia had bad teeth and bad eyes.
Many of them, their teeth were worn down to nothing. Speculation that everything they ate had sand in it. Such as drying their fish along the river bank with continuously blowing sand.
There was conjecture that the bad eyes and blindness might be from always being on the reflecting river water or the reflecting snow in the winter.