Historic Hood River
“View of Main Street looking east”
Notes
This poor print has been through a lot. In it’s 120+ years it has been handled extensively, glued to a board, left in sunlight for extended periods of time, but fortunately with a little digital magic we can still use it to step back in time. The caption is quite through, “View of Main Street looking east. At right are Sam Bartmess and O. B. Hartley’s Stores. Mel Foley in the street, O. B. Hartley and Jack Bin[n]s and Bert Entrican are in front of the store.”
I can add you can see the York Drug Store and a Millinery further down Oak. We can narrow down the date range because the O.B. Hartley Groceries was displaced by the Paris Fair about 1903. I’m placing this “circa 1900”.
In addition to the men identified in the caption, there are some great details like the well dressed couple in front of the drug store, and the group of workmen around a wagon down the block.
The only building which survives from this era is the Bartmess Building (to the right). Its facade has been altered, but that second floor balcony is still visible in the modern image below.
Tags: 4th Street, Bartmess, Bartmess Building, Binns, Entrican, Hartley, Hartley Grocery, millinery, Oak Street, wagon, York Drug Store
Dale Nicol
Wow, a great photo of bygone days in downtown Hood River.
Arthur, thanks for your effort to bring back this photo’s details.
kmb
Even with the poor print quality, a fascinating picture nonetheless. “Circa 1900” is apropos…at the turn of the century…this picture has such a 19th century vibe to it, the old way of life in the wild west, with a new 20th century beginning and a whole new world and way of life ahead for these people.
Jeffrey Bryant
Mel Foley married Mary Vaughan, my grandmother’s aunt, about 1905. Thanks for the picture of him, even though it is not his best side.
Rick Hyde
Great photo. You can almost feel the silence but the rustle of a few leaves, the clip clop of hooves and the murmur of conversation.
Arthur Babitz
You forgot to mention the smells.
L. E.
Yes, the smells. Wasn’t Hartley’s Grocery at one time, a meat market?
https://www.hoodriverhistorymuseum.org/construction-site/
I chuckle at this 1893 news item:
“A litter of pigs and their mamma, belonging to O. B. Hartley, recently swam the Columbia from near the mouth of Hood River….and last week a big steer, starting from the same place, swam up the eddy to the big rock near the ferry landing, where he climbed out and took a rest and then struck out for the Washington shore, which he reached safely.”