Historic Hood River
Rooster Rock
Notes
This tranquil scene of a sailboat near Rooster Rock dates from 1902. This type of rig is known as a “gaff rig.” You don’t see them around much anymore, but most of the sailboat images in our collection from this era were gaff rigs, like this ferry. You can learn all about gaff rigging here. I’m sure there are some sail experts out there who can tell us all about the tradeoffs between sail area and spar length/ strength, but this is a good reminder we’re not that many years removed from the era when cleverly designed sailboats were one of the fastest modes of transportation around here.
This image reminded me of the many wonderful images by Lily E. White and Sarah Hall Ladd in the collections of the Oregon Historical Society. They worked in this same era– 1900-1905– and the OHS have opened up digital access to these collections considerably. Click through those links to see the entire digital archives. Sorry if you wind up losing a couple of hours to these archives. For a briefer taste, this image of Castle Rock shows a very similar (if not the same) sailboat. White and Ladd lived on the houseboat. I wonder if the sailboat was theirs. This image gives you an idea of the quality of their work.
Dale Nicol
Arthur, the image 2 of 2 appears to be a different and smaller hull and the stern is “swept up” in the sailing photo above with a good sized rudder.
Dale Nicol
I thought this boat design looked vaguely familiar and I think it’s a gill net boat, just like the ones on the lower Columbia prior to gasoline engines being installed in smaller fishing water craft. The 1902 time period is in the middle of sail/row powered gill net boats.
kmb
Perhaps a dumb question, but what is the structure we see crossing the river, from the base of the rock over to the other side?
Arthur Babitz
thanks for pointing that out, kmb– it’s a fish wheel and the netting to aim the fish into it.