Historic Hood River

Notes

This photo is the starting point for a complicated but important story. Notes indicate this is Polly Crandall Price, seated, and her friend Aurora Watt, taken about 1867. It also states she wrote her diary crossing on the Oregon Trail in 1852.

Polly Coon did indeed cross the country on the Oregon trail in 1852 to rejoin her husband, Thomas L. Coon, who had previously crossed with Polly’s brother, Clark Crandall, who had settled in what is now Silverton. TL Coon died in 1854, shortly before their son, Thomas R. Coon was born. Polly then platted the town of Silverton out of their donation land claim, making her the founding mother of Silverton.

She then married Stephen Price, and the family eventually wound up in Hood River. Her son TR Coon married Delia Coon and they become a prominent Hood River family, with Delia going on to document much of the complicated genealogy of the valley in her book, “History of Early Pioneer Families of Hood River Oregon.”.

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