Historic Hood River
Special Cows
8-25-2017
Notes
What makes these cows special? They were owned by Charles Reither, aka “Chicken Charlie”, and lived on his island in the middle of the Columbia River between Hood River and Mosier. More on Charles Reither later…
Kyle
Excited to learn more about this.
L.E.
Having grown up in an environment of farming on a Columbia River island, it is a wonderful and unique lifestyle all it’s own. Surprisingly an island can suffer from drought and every winter you watch the Idaho and upper Columbia snowfall for spring flood conditions.
Predators are few, but they do swim from the mainland.
Marketing your product, or a trip to the market requires the extra steps of loading and unloading a boat. A sack of groceries is loaded into your car, driven to a boat dock, unloaded from the car into a boat, across the water to another boat dock, bag of groceries unloaded from boat into another vehicle, transported to house and finally carried into house.
An 80 pound sack of chicken feed would not have been easy for Chicken Charlie.
Kenn
Miller Island at the mouth of the Deschutes was also used for grazing, cattle were transported in a WW ll duck from the Oregon side.
L.E.
Looks like baby, with his tongue sticking out, just got done eating. I am guessing mama cow is a Jersey/Guernsey cross.
charlott
I know Miller’s Island was used for grazing sheep…………..way back into the1800’s. Too bad the government doesn’t find a use for Miller’s.
L.E.
I think Miller Island is under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service and under protection for the Yakama Indian Nation as a cultural site.
nels
That’s a rather substantial barn to be on the island. Just think of hauling all those boards, much less assembling.