HCRH Milepost 72

Here are a few photos of HCRH Milepost 72, which -- as I mentioned in the previous milepost post -- is cleverly concealed just inside the east entrance to the Mosier Twin Tunnels. This has got to be the most unusual location of any of the mileposts I've seen, and I've seen quite a few of them. Strictly speaking this one is probably not one of the handful of originals that survived from 1916; the tunnel was filled with rocks and concrete and sealed off in the late 1950s, and if I had to guess, chances are the original was lost around that time, and then recreated when they restored this section of road in the late 1990s.

Nearby points of interest include, well, the tunnel it's inside of, for one thing. Which is a whole separate post I probably ought to finish sooner rather than later. Further west, in the gap I don't have photos from yet, apparently there's an HCRH Trail viewpoint right at the Hood River-Wasco county line and at least one seasonal waterfall right next to the old road, though I'm not sure where the latter is located exactly. There's also the Hatfield East trailhead itself, and a parking lot for the trailhead a short distance down the road from there. The parking area looks out over a rather stark, barren lava flow area that serves as a large ODOT rock quarry, and if you visit in the spring you miight be able to see Lelliot Falls (Mosier's second-most-famous waterfall, after Mosier Creek Falls) somewhere across the valley in that general direction. Though I've never come across any actual photos of it, so maybe it doesn't flow very often, or maybe it's just not very impressive in person, I dunno.

Due north of the tunnel (and milepost 72) and skipping over Interstate 84 (which doesn't count as a point of interest, sorry) there's a ~10 acre rocky island in the Columbia River, a short distance offshore, officially known as Eighteenmile Island and unofficially as Chicken Charlie's Island, though the origin of that name is not entirely clear; it was owned by a local eccentric named Charlie Reither from 1915-1963, but apparently he never actually had chickens there. The next owners replaced Chicken Charlie's shack with a groovy modern house in 1969. It sold in December 2025 for $1.675M after being on the market for several years; unfortunately the Zillow page for the house (and island) only has aerial photos of the place, because who wouldn't be curious about what it's like inside? The Zillow page also gives the legal address as simply "18 Mile Is., Mosier, OR 97040". Which is kind of neat, though it probably breaks a lot of online shopping sites that assume the 18 is an address on a street named "Mile Island", which is probably some kind of traffic island and not the real deal, and all things considered it's probably simpler to just get a P.O. Box and use that instead. For more info on the island, check out these two pages at the Hood River History Museum plus one page from the local public utility district (for whatever reason).