Historic Hood River
Picnic at Wau Gwin Gwin
7-6-2015
Notes
Time for a summer picnic, though these early Hood River residents seem a bit over dressed. This O. M. Pope photograph shows a party which made the trip out to Wau Gwin Gwin falls in the 1880s.
I suppose the population in Hood River was small enough that I shouldn’t be surprised to see some familiar faces. The young boy in the middle looks like Roy Slocum, who we saw in another O.M. Pope photo. He’s even wearing the same hat. The man seated (second from the right) holding an umbrella looks like carpenter Ase Oiler from the same photo. The man seated front and center is Dell Rand. The leftmost woman in the rear looks like Minnie LeRoy Rand, who was a schoolteacher.
L.E.
Why all the sticks?
They are wearing boutonnieres and corsages. Was there a wedding?
I look at photos like this and I wonder if they had the opportunity to bathe before they put on their dress up clothes, or did they just put hot heavy clothing on, over hot sticky, sweaty bodies?
Arthur
They look like hiking sticks to me, except for that one umbrella. I’m trying to figure out what Ase Oiler is sitting on top of. It has a door and a leather strap on the top. Maybe a cooler full of Corona?
The note indicating this is a picnic at Wau Gwin Gwin is in very old pen, along with an inscription from Bert Stranahan (who I think is in the picture). While I am always skeptical of photo notes, this looks like a reasonably contemporaneous note from a knowledgeable source.
Charlott
People in that era did not bathe like we do this day and age. Usually the Saturday night bath…………….