Historic Hood River
White River Falls
2-20-2014
Notes
I suspect Alva Day spent as much time trying to get all of the power lines into this shot as most photographers would spend trying to avoid them. I’m no critic, but I enjoy the mixture of technology and landscape. We’ll need to have an “Industrial Landcape” category when we do the Alva Day photo contest later this year.
l.e.
There is the expression, "I was born 30 years too late." But I don’t think that applies to Alva Day.
He was able to live and travel in this area and Alaska when it was still raw and undeveloped. He was able to satisfy his love of nature.
Yet, he was directly involved in the new development of technology that was changing lives in this area. To understand the workings of electricity and be involved in providing it to area homes would be a dream come true for an engineer.
But I have to wonder if he felt misgivings when he saw that the need for electrical power required a change in the natural outdoors he loved.
Arthur
I suspect Alva Day didn’t see a conflict between his love of the outdoors and his role in rural electrification. There was a feeling then that Americans were "taming the continent," with everything from roads across the country to dams across the rivers. I think he was taking a picture of what he viewed as a thing of beauty– the roaring river, and the mechanism to extract electricity from it.
Scott Cook
Excellent shot!! Fascinating history at White River falls for sure. Sherar had a flour mill there above the falls before the hydro power came. One of his millstones has been broken-up and cemented into the base of the drinking fountain at the park.