Historic Hood River
Pano Detail: Bingen Point, Railroad Trestle
12-19-2020
Notes
This detail shows the verdant bottom land roughly near Bingen Point, as well as a monster railroad trestle east of Koberg. I’ve never heard of this trestle before. The image is smudged, but I think the trestle starts just west of the tunnel. All that land has now been filled with railroad and freeway construction.
Ralph Allen Brown
According to the 1874 surveyors map, historical notes, and a ton of research time, using plat maps etc. The Warner,s Landing is just not visible here, however the location of the White Salmon blockhouse might be on the extreme left. The year of this pano is 1905 or 1906 (still working on that), and Warner's Landing may have been replaced with something called middle landing (to the right of this picture). Unfortunately on the survey maps and plat maps, they do not always show the bodies water in the same place in relation to the township and section lines making an exact placement impossible.
ArthurB
Looks like I accidentally left a Saturday bonus image. The original post had a “pre-cleaning” clip, which I have replaced with a cleaner version.
Bingen Point (and possibly Warner's Landing) continues behind the bluff, which is why we can't resolve Ralph's question. But you can see plenty of signs of cattle grazing on the hillside. The cattle are still there (seasonally) and some of their paths have become bike trails.
AndyB
Why does it look like there is sand on the hillsides in the foreground?
Some heavy grazing going on there.
I am pretty sure this is about where the Millennium Trail goes on Hospital Hlll.
L.E.
I suppose the original photographer had no way of zooming in on his photos like Arthur is able to do today?
Such an amazing panoramic view, that we are able to reap the benefit from. It is almost like he knew he was documenting history, for later generations.
ArthurB
LE, the photographer would have been able to use a jeweler's loupe to check the detail of their negative, but probably would just do that to check focus. We can be pretty sure we're the first people to be study it in this resolution. This is especially true with negatives which might have >10x the resolution they could see in a contact print.
The concept of the photographic enlarger was developed quite early, but the technology didn't become widely used until the 1920s-30s.
L.E.
I just read this in some White Salmon pioneer stories about the 1894 flood.
“John and Tune Wyers tell of the OR&N railroad on the Oregon side. The tracks were not laid on a fill as today, but on wooden trestles. The 1894 flood washed out whole sections which went floating down the Columbia along with outbuildings and houses caught in the turbulent water.”