Historic Hood River
Pilot Butte Inn
4-28-2025
Notes
This postcard of the Pilot Butte Inn is in the George Thomson family album. From context it looks like they visited in the 1920s.
The Pilot Butte Inn was built in 1917 on the banks of the Deschutes River in Bend (corner of Wall Street and Newport). This article tells the story of its history and untimely demise in 1973. Famous guests included First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
I am not familiar with the photographer “Van Vleet” but there appear to be many of his postcards of Bend that have survived.
Category: default
Tags: Bend, Deschutes River, hotel, Pilot Butte Inn, postcard, Roosevelt, Thomson, Van Vleet
Tags: Bend, Deschutes River, hotel, Pilot Butte Inn, postcard, Roosevelt, Thomson, Van Vleet
Ellen
John E Tourellotte was the Boise architect who designed the inn using local river rock and pine. Among a whole host of buildings and houses, he also designed the Idaho State Capitol. He lived for a short period in Portland.
L. E.
There was an early Clark County, WA settler and surveyor named Van Vleet. He did survey work in Klickitat County.
L. E.
From the October 02, 2007 Bend Bulletin: P.36
“Roy Van Vleet, a Wisconsin native, came West in the early 1900’s and moved to Bend in 1916 to work at the Shevlin-Hixon lumber mill, according to his son Willmer Van Vleet of Stayton. In the 1920’s, he developed an interest in photography and worked at Elite Studio in Bend, which he eventually purchased. The Depression forced him to close the studio in 1929.
Willmer Van Vleet inherited his father’s collection of materials from the studio. It included about 175 glass-plate negatives:…..”
It is a long article that talks about his photography with some photos.