Historic Hood River
Teasers
Notes
For many years access to our museum collection was very loosely controlled, leading to frustrating teasers like this in our collection. We know this image was placed in the “Organizations, GAR” file in the 1990s (I think that is Sally Donovan’s handwriting). Someone identified it as part of the series of images from the 1904 GAR encampment which was held in Hood River. But what happened to the rest of the image?
Loose photos were crammed in file folders in overfilled file cabinets, so it could have been torn off by poor handling. Or someone could have borrowed the image for use in a display or presentation, as was common on those days, and damaged it while it was outside of the museum. Perhaps we’ll find it somewhere in the collection. In any case, this small portion of the image is archived and preserved for whatever limited historical value it may have.
L.E.
I was going to ask if that building was at Bridal Veil Falls, but it is a train isn’t it?
Arthur Babitz
Yes, it’s a passenger railcar. I should have mentioned that! I believe the man in the foreground was a conductor or porter. Maybe someone who knows railroad uniforms can identify the cap.
Roger Sheldrake
If I had to guess, I’d say porter. However the other two hats look military-ish
Thorn
Amazing what a literal scrap of history can tell.
This HHR link shows the town of Bridal Veil in 1913, a few years after the 1907 railroad update.
https://www.hoodriverhistorymuseum.org/bridal-veil-circa-1913/
The matching hats must be on heads of Civil War Union veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. They may be buried, with these very hats, in Portland’s West Hills:
https://www.oregonmetro.gov/places/grand-army-republic-cemetery
And the happy woman, likely a member of the Women’s Relief Core, is still sixteen years from national suffrage.
https://womansreliefcorps.org
And the porter represents early Oregon Black History, possibly just a generation removed from slavery and potential resident of the Golden West Hotel.
https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/golden_west_hotel/
And if you put it all together, this little torn scrap of a photo, tells powerful stories.
Arthur Babitz
Thanks Thorn, good links!