Historic Hood River

Notes

You’d think the history of our history museum would be well documented, but it’s not.  What we know is sometime around 1907 area residents started to worry that as the “pioneer” generation was dying out the history of their settlement would be forgotten.  They formed the Hood River Pioneer Association, and conducted a campaign to collect artifacts and stories of Hood River’s “pioneer” days as they saw them.  Their second annual meeting is described here.  The campaign to collect artifacts and stories soon became linked with the effort to create a Carnegie library in the town.  We have documentation of a formal meeting in 1913 , 1924,  1929, and then several in the 1950s.

This group appears to overlap with the formation of the Hood River Historical Society which is described on one of their postcards below.  I suspect the Historical Society was more the museum group, and the Pioneer Association more a social institution.  I am not sure when the Pioneer Association ceased operations, but the number of pioneers was dwindling by the 1950s.  The Hood River Historical Society picked up the mantle and operated the museum for some number of years.  It appears it then became a part of the Hood Ricer County government, and stayed that way until the formation of the Hood River County Heritage Council in 2013.  The Heritage Council is a 501(c)(3) which operates the museum and manages to collection, though the museum building and the collection remain the property of the county.  Confused yet?

Here’s the text that accompanied this postcard.

Number Twelve-Historical Museum. Hood River. Oregon. 1951.
Historical postcard published by the Hood River Historical Society, 1950-1951.
This society was organized in 1948 by the State Historical officers, Dr. Burt Brown Barker and Lancaster Pollard of Portland. The meeting was held on August 6, 1948 in the Riverside Church. Percy Bucklin was elected temporary President, Else Rogers, Secretary, Richard Krug, Treasurer. The State officers gave a very instructive talk on the way Oregon was settled, and how it was first petitioned as the Territorial country, which included all of the present states west of the Rocky mountains. 1948 marked the century of that territorial struggle, and Hood River County Historical Society formed in this year can well be proud. The permanent officers elected June 29, 1949 were Ed Lage, President; Orville Barnett, Vice President; Arlene Hinrich, Secretary; Percy Bucklin, Treasurer. The Board members were Gladys Hinrich, West Side; Norma Rumbaugh, Parkdale; Lucy Griffiths, Cascade Locks; Waldo Arens, Pine Grove and Odell; Fair Hand, Hood River.
The County Court gave a lease of this building, pictured here, to the society for use as the Museum until a more permanent place could be had. The building itself, is of historic interest. Ella May Davidson, Historian, can give the data on this. The pioneers had a nice collection of relics to start this museum, and many other things are being donated. They have thousands of beautiful photos, and a series of postcards are to published for the furtherance of history.

You may recognize this museum building as the one-time Yasui Bros. store on Third Street behind the Butler Bank Building.

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