Historic Hood River
Terminal Ice Company
10-7-2019
Notes
The secret of the commercial fruit business is refrigeration. Early in the century packing houses started constructing refrigeration units with ammonia compressors so they could both store the fruit at a cool temperature and ship it in rail cars packed with ice. This is the construction of the “Terminal Ice Company” in Van Horn (Pine Grove). The building is still there, and you can even read part of the old “Terminal Ice Company” sign on the building. I believe it now houses “The Fruit Company” which ships gift baskets nationwide.
Category: default
Tags: agriculture, fruit, fruit picking, ice, orchard, Pine Grove, Terminal Ice Company, Van Horn
Tags: agriculture, fruit, fruit picking, ice, orchard, Pine Grove, Terminal Ice Company, Van Horn
Charlott
I know this photo well, as I have a copy, reason being my Uncle, Oscar Croan is in it. He is the man in the white undershirt, on the bottom row, fifth from right. It may have been Terminal Ice in the beginning, but when I was a child it belonged to A.G.A. My Dad, grandpa and uncles hauled a lot of fruit to there. I have ridden along on many loads. Trucks and orchard wagon loads were unloaded into the warehouse on the west side. Keep in mind this was all done with boxes loaded and unloaded by hand…. Rail cars if need to be loaded were naturally loaded on the east side. I don’t know who actually owns the building now, quite possibly Diamond (A.G.A.) and they lease the south end to Websters for their Fruit Company. It would be fun to get inside and see what all it looks like now. If I remember correctly Edwin DeBoard worked at that location for a very long time.
Buck Parker
Do we know the year of construction?
Jeffrey Bryant
I’m sure Charlott can give more details, but the nearby Grange building used to be on the north side of the road next to this building. Walter Wells moved it to the south side. He also moved the hotel from the east side of the tracks to the west side of this building.
L.E.
In a previous photo there was a discussion about the bricks used for building. Any idea where the brick for this building came from?
nels
Do you have a date on this construction?
ArthurB
I don’t have a date. It doesn’t seem to be on the state registry of historic places.
Jeffrey W Bryant
The Terminal Ice & Cold Storage Company of Portland was incorporated in 1911 with capital of $100,000. (Daily Capital Journal, April 7, 1911). In 1913, Frank E. Deem bought a controlling interest in the company and was moving from Van Horn to Portland. Before coming to Hood River, A. F. Bickford was in charge of warehouses for the Terminal Ice & Storage Company of Portland. Several advertisements were placed in the Hood River Glacier in 1920 indicating there was available cold storage space in their Portland warehouse.
It appears that the warehouse may have been built around 1911. This is about the same time that the hotel at Van Horn was built (later lived in by Walter and Susie Wells).
Charlott
The hotel there in Pine Grove that sat along what is now Mason Road originally was operated by my grandfather’s aunt and her husband, Mark and Mattie (Wells) Thomas. They came west initially to Hood River, then went north to Canada with Mattie’s brother Charles Wells and family. Then back to Hood River and ran the hotel, which sat next to a stable and blacksmith shop.
No the storage was not built in the 19ll time frame. It was after 1936 and the start of World War II, as my uncle who worked on it did not come from the mid west until 1936.
ArthurB
The surviving building looks like it was built in multiple segments, just like the Union Building downtown. I wonder if this photo is construction of a major extension or the original building? Unfortunately we don’t have any early maps of Pine Grove which might show if the building existed prior to the 1930s.
I’ll add that based on the source the photo is more likely from the late 20’s or 30’s than 1911, which matches Charlott’s personal knowledge dating it to after 1936.