Next up we're taking a look at the Hood River Loops, a fun section of the old Columbia River Highway on the eastern edge of Hood River, beginning at the intersection with OR 35. Like the Crown Point Loops[1] (which we visited in the HCRH Milepost 25 post a while back), this is a spot where the old highway climbed a hill by way of multiple switchbacks, in order to limit the slope to something the average car of 1916 could handle.
To give you some idea what that means, the best-selling car that year -- and for most years between 1908 and 1927 -- was the Ford Model T, which came with a 4 cylinder engine producing 20 horsepower and had a top speed of around 42 mph. For context, 20 horsepower is about the same as a present-day riding lawnmower (which is much lighter than a Model T), or about four professional-grade leafblowers. The fastest and most powerful car on the US market in 1916 seems to have been the Packard Twin Six, which had a 464 cubic inch V12(!) engine, but even that only put out a measly 88 horsepower, although that was partly due to the crappy low octane gas of the era.
As with the other multi-switchback sections on the highway, it quickly became apparent that allowing any sort of development at this spot would be a bad idea, potentially turning these ordinary hairpin corners into blind hairpin corners, maybe with a few zero-visibility driveways here and there to make it extra spicy. To prevent this, and probably to preserve views from the top, the state bought the land around the loops in June 1922 and declared the place to be a new state park[2]. You can see this on vintage Highway Commission survey maps from around that time, which I have to link to just because they look cool: The one for the park itself (drawing no. 1R-1-695) is titled "Hood River Loops acquired to protect slopes". Map 3B-15-8 zooms out and covers the whole stretch of the old pre-Interstate-84 route between Hood River and Mosier, and map 1R-1-1167 covers more of the Highway 35 part of the intersection.
The obscure little park got a brief mention in State Parks of the Columbia Gorge (1946, p.45-46), a Highway Commission publication about the various and sundry state-owned or managed places between Troutdale and The Dalles. It travels up the Gorge, west to east, and for each state park there's a description by W.A. Langille, state park historian, followed by recommendations by Samuel H. Boardman, longtime state park superintendent. Langille's blurb about the Hood River Loops is on page 45:
The Hood River Loops Development Area, is made up of small wayside units situated at the junction of the Columbia River Highway and the Mount Hood Highway, and bordering the loops of the rising main highway, just east of Hood River. The junction tract is described as being Lots 1, 2, and 3, Block 1, of Reynolds addition to Hood River, containing 2.77 ecres, a gift to the State of Oregon by the county of Hood River, the deed date February 4, 1931. The tracts bordering the loops, aggregating 4.20 acres were purchased in three parcels, described as being in Section 31, Township 3 North of Range ll gast, W.M., Hood River County, Oregon. The deed dates being May 22, June 13 and September 12, 1922.
The lots at the junction of the highways were acquired for extra right of way and the loop tracts were obtained to prevent encroachments upon the banks of the ascending loops, where there were usable gravel deposits. No park improvements of any kind have been made up to this time.
On the next page, Boardman's one and only recommendation was "They should be left in their natural state." And sure enough, a pre-1937 vintage aerial photo at the Hood River History Museum, and HistoricAerials photos from 1947 and 1973 all show the place looking essentially the same as it does now.
In fact this is still the plan today. ODOT's current master plan for the old highway briefly mentions the Loops on page 44, saying "This section begins with the Hood River Loops, twisting and turning swiftly up the hillside", with a small aerial photo showing what they mean by that, but (just like 1946) they don't have any specific plans for the Loops beyond maintaining the area as-is. But at least nobody's going to build a fugly McMansion right here.
To understand why the state did all this, it may help to remember that Oregon state parks began as a sort of side project of the state highway agency (in its various guises over the years) and continued on this way all the way through 1989, when they were finally split off as a separate department in their own right. So for most of the agency's existence it must've seemed like the most natural thing in the world to set aside bits of land like this for passive enjoyment from a moving vehicle[3], and the loops would probably be classified that way if they had remained in the state park system. But in 1953-54 this stretch of highway was bypassed by the shiny new Interstate freeway along the river. Unlike the famous stretch of the old road through the main waterfall corridor, this stretch of road was handed off to Hood River County, and was eventually gated off a mile or so further east of here after the closure of the Mosier Twin Tunnels. And, per state park policy at the time, since the place was no longer on a state highway, anything along the road was not a statewide concern anymore and the park was promptly handed off the the county along with the road. But things changed again with the 1980s revival of interest in the old highway, and at some point the state took it back and the land currently belongs to ODOT again.[4]
At this point I should note that while "passive enjoyment from a moving vehicle" may be the only intended use of the place, there are a couple of others. The main one, of course, is to drive or bike or I guess unicycle or street luge the tight corners here. Maybe even exceeding the posted speed limit at times. And then possibly turning around and doing it again a few more times, because practice makes perfect and all that. And at this point Legal wants me to point out that I am not at liberty to say exactly how I know all this, and you should absolutely positively not try this at home, not even if you're a professional driver on a closed course, and not even if you're driving a Model T -- which is nice and slow but makes up for that by being unsafe in countless other ways.
The other main thing you can do here is stop somewhere safe along the road and take photos, maybe film your friend descending the hill on inline skates, or drifting the loops really fast in a vintage Group B rally car they're restoring, something along those lines. Unlike the loops at Crown Point, there is at least a bit of a view from the top and from one curve to the next, and it seems like this would be a fairly compelling place to film a car commercial. They're always filming car commercials around Crown Point and at Rowena, and I suspect the whole Hood River Valley has been exhaustively scouted for potential filming locations, so it just stands to reason a few have been filmed here. But I haven't actually come across any yet, and in fact YouTube can't find anything at all under "Hood River Loops".
A third thing you could maybe do here is poke around and be a big history dweeb[5]. Though if you're interested in the old Columbia River Highway, I have to tell you that (other than the loops) not that much has survived intact from a century ago around here.
For one thing, just before the first curve (if you're going uphill) is a point where HCRH Milepost 67 ought to be, but isn't. ODOT's milepost map includes it, indicating there must have been one here within the last few years, but I looked around and didn't see one, and turned around and drove by again to be sure, and repeated the process once or twice and still couldn't find it, so (like a couple of other mileposts we met early on in that project) I suspect some clumsy driver sideswiped it within the last few years while trying to look cool here, and it's gone until ODOT gets around to making a new one.
On the other hand, there is an extant HCRH Milepost 68 just a mile up the road, shortly before the gate closing the road to car traffic. But that's the subject of a whole other upcoming post.
More importantly, just on the other side of the intersection with OR 35, the old highway crosses the Hood River, and you might think there would be a cool old historic bridge there, and in fact there used to be one, a triple-arch bridge built in 1918 in the usual Gorge bridge style. But it was demolished in 1982, replaced by a taller and wider and more practical, and safer, but utterly forgettable and utilitarian, concrete structure. I had made a mental note to take a couple of photos of it for the sake of completeness, and then forgot so completely that I only remembered months later, and I would bet money that I forget again the next time I'm in the area, or maybe stop to take photos and get bored and leave before actually taking any.
Footnote(s)
The loops here are mentioned in the caption of an Oregon State Archives photo of the Rowena Loops. Per ODOT's resident historian, Samuel Lancaster personally designed the Crown Point Loops near the Vista House, and after that other state highway engineers applied Lancaster's design principles to similar loops built at Rowena, here at Hood River, and the long-lost ones at Clatsop Crest on the Lower Columbia Highway.
On the map "Hood River Loops acquired to protect slopes.", dated 06/01/1922, the park is labeled as a "Roadside Development Area. Which was part of an old State Park classification scheme, per ODOT's 1940-1942 Biennial report (pages 114-115):
In order to avoid duplication of personnel and equipment, the Maintenance Department, beginning with the year 1941, assumed the maintenance of the roads and parking areas leading to and within State Highway parks. State parks were classified under three headings — Official State Parks, Minor Parks, and Roadside Development Areas. The Maintenance Department was charged with the betterment and maintenance of park roads and parking areas in all three of the classifications and with all betterment and maintenance of buildings and grounds in the minor parks and roadside developments. Betterment and maintenance of buildings and grounds in official state parks is a function of the Parks Department. There are 73 official parks, 44 minor parks and 33 roadside development areas.
Per the report for 1942-1944 at that point there were 76 areas designated as official state parks, 48 as minor state parks and 32 as roadside development areas, a total of 151 areas aggregating 46,868 acres. The report noted that park visitorship was down because of World War II. Some parks were closed entirely due to the war, like Bradley SP on the Columbia, I guess it must have provided too good of a view of what was going on along the river, as an endless stream of newly built ships headed downriver and out to sea from Portland shipyards -- Liberty Ships, and later Casablanca-class aircraft carriers. Additionally, there would have been a large volume of cargo ships headed to Vladivostok and other Soviet ports with cargo bound for the eastern front via the Trans-Siberian Railway. But I digress.
The 1948-50 report stopped breaking out the parks by the 1941 classification, and listed 181 units of all types totaling over 69,000 acres, plus a new system of 20 "roadside picnic areas", the origin of the current highway rest area system
Despite having "Development" right there in the name, RDAs tended to be small and generally had nothing in the way of park facilities, so I think the name was supposed to mean something like "Reserved for Future Development". From what I can tell, the state seems to have lost track of several of these over the years, so when they finally split state parks off from ODOT in the 1990s, by law anything related to state parks was supposed to transfer over to the new department, but places that had sort of fallen down the back of the sofa over time weren't on that list and ODOT still owns them.
Under today's weird overly-clinical naming scheme, a place like the Loops that you're supposed to admire from a moving car is a "State Scenic Corridor", like the H.B. Van Duzer corridor along OR18 on the way to Lincoln City. If you're supposed to admire it from a moving boat, it's a "State Scenic Waterway", like a big stretch of the Deschutes River. And if you can stop and take photos and admire the view from one place it's a "State Scenic Viewpoint", like Portland Womens Forum, and
If there's more to do than just admire the view, it's either a "State Recreation Site" (like Fishing Rock and many of the other small parks on the coast) or a "State Recreation Area" mostly depending on the size of the place. Some river parks are classified as State Recreation Areas rather than Scenic Waterways, and from what I can tell the difference is in what the river is like. If you can float downstream lazily admiring the scenery, it's a Scenic Waterway, and if you're hanging on for dear life barrelling over a never-ending series of rapids, it's a Recreation Area, and the dividing line is somewhere in between.
There are a few officially called "State Park", like the flagship one at Silver Falls. These are usually larger and have actual people staffing the place, at least during tourist season, and some of them (but not all) offer overnight camping. A "State Natural Area" or "State Natural Site" is sort of the opposite of that: No amenities, no developed visitor facilities, often no State Park sign welcoming you to the place. McLoughlin SNA in the Gorge is one of these. A "State Heritage Area" is a bit like a state park, but with history. If you like to watch people cosplaying as old timey pioneers, demonstrating old timey pioneer handicrafts, this is your best bet to experience that. Champoeg Park is probably the best-known of these. A "State Heritage Site" is smaller but still historical, albeit cosplay-free, like the Willamette Stone SHS in Portland's West Hills.
Later notes added to the 1922 map say most of the area was transferred to Hood River County in 1956, and another bit was sold in 1984. But apparently the state wanted the land back at some point after that, and owns it all again, per Hood River County GIS. Their page about the property now says it's taxlot number 03N11E31B01500, and its current size is 4.11 "Map Acres", or 7.56 "Assessor Acres". I'm not sure what the difference is, but one possibility is that the latter number includes the street right of way while the first number doesn't.
And this footnote is where I relate a historical anecdote I ran across that didn't really fit anywhere else. 1903 Hood River County land survey trying to resolve a boundary dispute between Mr. Frank Button and the Mt. Hood Lumber Company. The land in question fronted on both the Hood and Columbia Rivers, both of which had meandered enough over time that no earlier survey markers could be found in those areas. After a bit of this the surveyor (one John Leland Hudson, if I'm reading the signature correctly) throws up his hands on page 4 and says he can't proceed until he can obtain certified copies of the original General Land Office survey and all the field notes that went along with it.
The survey resumed a month later, with the necessary documents in hand, but any hope that this would clear things up were quickly dashed. Again the survey crew kept encountering survey markers that could not be found, as a lot of them had been placed relative to trees that were no longer there. Other markers turned up in the wrong place, due in part to egregious errors by a previous (and now retired) County Surveyor, which often did not align with the original egregious errors made by the US General Land Office surveyor. Hudson directed much of his ire at the latter:
I found no two courses, (where all are supposed N. and S.), parallel in the whole claim, S., E., and W. bdys. Nor did I find more than one measurement as given in the field notes. The U.S. Deputy Sur. must have been either drunk, crazy, or a fool. A worse piece of surveying, I never before saw, done by a U.S. Deputy Surveyor.
Ouch! Hudson then explains how he corrected several errors of basic arithmetic in the previous surveys, and determined the correct boundary accordingly, and wraps up with another dig at the original surveyor:
This U.S. Deputy Surveyor, Mr. L.F. Cartee, must have been a “Jim Dandy”. Dr. Adams says his name was Cartee, but the Notes make it Carter.
And now having established the line of division between the said Frank H. Button and the said Mt. Hood Lumber Company, in manner as aforesaid, and to the best of my ability, I quit the survey and job, and am d——d glad to say good-bye.
Not quite as dramatic an exit as popping the emergency escape slide, but pretty dramatic for a land survey narrative, as these things are usually dry as dust. And there are hints that this was just the tip of the iceberg: Mr. Button, one of the parties to the dispute, was also somehow made part of the survey crew when it resumed. That work partly relied on the recollections of that error-prone retired county surveyor, who seems to have been some sort of local power broker that people deferred to. So it's possible Hudson may have found himself at odds with the local good ol' boy network just by trying to do his job by the book. I may also be reading way too much into this stuff.
A later coda: ODOT map 1R-2-498, titled "Acquired from F.H. Button Est. for Stock Pile Site", September 1937. But they may have gotten a bit ahead of themselves; a cursive note in pencil says simply "Would not sell. Jan 1938"
