Historic Hood River
Second Street Overpass Construction
8-5-2014
Notes
This April 1952 image shows the start of a major transformation in Hood River. For 70 years Second Street dead ended at the railroad tracks, but in 1952 it was raised to meet an overpass which provided access to the soon-to-be-constructed highway along the river. As iconic as Lancaster’s Columbia River Highway was, it served as the primary auto route for only about 35 years. Ten years later the Army Corp of Engineers built the first section of the current Hood River waterfront.
I suspect Alva Day took this shot from the veranda of the Hotel Oregon.
Note what looks like a steam donkey still in use on this construction site. This is probably when they removed the water tank which serviced Arlen’s steam locomotives for some 80 years.
charlott
That is the Gerdes place barely showing on the far right.
That has to be Nichols boat works out there in the distance.
Too bad that water tank is located where it is. Wouldn’t it be nice to have had it preserved for Arlen?
Buzz
I don’t see a steam donkey. What am I missing? I see a crane with a long boom that looks like it might be being used to drive piling.
spinsur
That’s a metal tank, too, so not too old at that time. Note the semaphore just west of the tank.
Arthur
Isn’t that the boiler for a steam donkey behind the tank?
spinsur
On the dredged sand dike, just above the water tank. I’m kind of wondering if it was used not as a skidder, but as a dredge pump possibly, or some other way of moving dredgings.
l.e.
Alva Day was probably taking a photo of the power poles.
I know you would have crossed the tracks at the end of the Interstate Bridge and come up Button Hill to the HR Bridge, but was there anywhere else where downtown HR traffic could cross the tracks?
I wonder where the sand came from. Dredging the Columbia River?
Buzz
I would guess it isn’t a steam donkey at all, but if it is, maybe at one time it was used with a drag line bucket for dredging. And I would guess it has been sitting there unused for years. Surprise me somebody, and tell me I am wrong.
Norma
Rene deVin’s Buick dealership on the left side.u
Jim Gray
It must have been a Chevrolet Dealership first, as the Chevy Bowtie symbol is along the top front.