Ok, next up we're visiting HCRH Milepost 29, which is one of the easier ones to visit since it's right by the Angels Rest Trail parking lot. The red pushpin is not exactly where the milepost is; I think Maps realizes the trailhead is a thing lots of people are interested in and it really, really wants to direct you there instead. I imagine Google does this just in case the trailhead is some sort of business and therefore a potential advertiser.
- Obviously the Angels Rest Trail is the main point of interest right here. Or at least that's why everyone else is here. And a few of them may look at you funny while you're taking photos of the milepost, at least until mileposting goes mainstream and sells out to the man, and every social media influencer has to swing by and do a video or take a selfie here.
- On the way up the trail, you'll soon encounter Coopey Falls and Upper Coopey Falls in close succession, and when you get to the top of Angels Rest you might be able to see Foxglove Falls if it's flowing.
An unnumbered county road -- another of those "local access" roads we keep running into -- branches off near the Angels Rest parking lot and heads into the old mill site, next to power lines. Back when the mill was operating, this was part of the company town and there were houses along this little road. It just so happened that the mill went on the market around 1990, right when there was zero chance that anything connected to the timber industry would attract historic preservation dollars. In retrospect, though, I can't help thinking they could have been turned into vacation rental cabins, or maybe seasonal housing for Scenic Area staff or state park employees, maybe reserve one for an Artist in Residence program, who knows.
Since that didn't happen, and there's nothing much down the road anymore, it could be turned into a trail pretty easily It slopes gently down into the mill site and ends up close to the base of Bridal Veil Falls. Seems ideal for bikes but I'm not sure where it would go from there, if the idea was to, say, climb back up to the highway west of the falls.
- You'll probably notice there are still a number of houses east of the old mill site that weren't demolished after the mill closed. These buildings were never part of the company town, and for a while this area was known as the adjacent town of Coopey Falls, back when there was a need to tell the company town and the normal town apart. This distinction was very, very important back in June 1935, as there was an ugly labor dispute going on nearby at the Bridal Veil sawmill. Activists from the Sawmill and Timber Workers Union, local No. 2532, had rented some property at Coopey Falls as a base of operations while trying to unionize the Bridal Veil sawmill. Portland was still a conservative city in a conservative county in a conservative state back in those days, and the local DA and county sheriff were determined to break up what they said was an illegal strike, which meant any strike of any kind at all, and sheriff's deputies and state police were sent in to administer beatdowns and evict the union from the Coopey Falls property by any means necessary. They even set up a police roadblock near Troutdale, turning back anyone who looked like they might be a union member or interested in becoming one. The following month, Congress passed the pro-labor Wagner Act (aka the National Labor Relations Act of 1935), the start of the one brief decade or so when federal labor laws weren't overwhelmingly tilted in favor of big business, ending with the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.
- Next we've got several items that involve a trip up Palmer Mill Road, an old narrow gravel road that heads uphill next to Bridal Veil Creek. The start of the road doubles as an overflow parking lot for Angels Rest, and another couple of hundred feet up the road a small creek passes under the road in a culvert. This is tiny Mead Creek, home to a really obscure waterfall that we visited a while back.
- After that, a faint roadbed forks off to the right and continues along sort of parallel to and between the old highway and Palmer Mill Rd. This is another piece of County Road 634, which we last encountered in the form of a gated road between Latourell and the Bridal Veil Falls area. The county doesn't seem to think this one even rises to being a "local access road", and I think they just classify it as a random bit of unused county-owned right of way. Which is probably just as well, since this track eventually ends at a 50' sheer cliff right above the HCRH. I don't know exactly what happened here, and have never seen any pre-HCRH photos of this spot that might clear that up, but if I had to guess I'd say there was a surprisingly large amount of dynamite involved. I mean, I guess the road could have ended here and you'd pay someone to winch your covered wagon down a vertical cliff like at Laurel Hill on Mt. Hood. But Oregon Trail (the game) was pretty clear that the sketchy winch stuff was only a hazard on the Barlow Road route, south of Mt. Hood, and the river route is where you usually drown in rapids juuusst short of the end of the trail. Although a late bout of dysentery can still take you down whichever route you pick.
- You might have also noticed what looks like another overgrown gravel road off to the left. It branched off just west of Mead Creek and runs parallel to Palmer Mill while continuing to climb the hill, whatever this hill is called. It looks kind of interesting but as of right now I have never followed it and know nothing about it, beyond the fact that it seems to peter out in the forest after a mile or two and it might connect to the wider trail network up there.
- Continuing up Palmer Mill Road there are completely unofficial spots where you can scramble down to Middle and Upper Bridal Veil Falls. I have actually never been to either of them. I see photos and I always think I'd like to see them in person at some point, then I go to YouTube and see videos of people scrambling down into the canyon in a sort of semi-controlled plummet, and that reminds me why I haven't been there. There's a proposal floating around out on the interwebs to put in a proper trail connecting both waterfalls to the state park and the famous lower falls. Long story short, I would like that trail to exist. And not as a memorial trail named after me due to my having The Accident here.
- Eventually you'll come across concrete barriers on the road, which is as far uphill as you can go on Palmer Mill in a vehicle. Not that I would recommend driving on Palmer Mill in the first place; I've done it before, but it's not really my idea of a good time. You can keep going by bike for another mile or two, but then there's a stretch a bit further along where the Forest Service decommissoned the road entirely, and dumped old logs all over it, after the Eagle Creek Fire. Because of something to do with erosion and stream health, if I remember right, and if you manage to get past the impassable part another gated stretch of road will take you the rest of the way to Larch Mountain Road. And on the other side of Larch Mountain Road, Palmer Mill becomes forest road NF-20 and takes you to the forbidden Bull Run watershed.
- As for trails that do exist, there's a veritable labyrinth of unofficial trails and old logging roads connecting Angels Rest and Palmer Mill Road. That link goes to OpenStreetMap, which I gather is the closest thing there is to a canonical map of the area, maintained by some of the same people who maintain the trail network. I admit I haven't spent a lot of time poking around up there and don't have a photoset to share. I gather the scenic highlights are mostly vintage abandoned cars, most with varying degrees of target practice damage. Not something I usually seek out, but I suppose they at least give future archeologists an accurate picture of what the 20th and 21st centuries were like, unless they're scavenged for meth money first. Rumor has it there's event an abandoned vintage JetSki somewhere up there, and the archeologists of the distant year 3025 may find that a bit more confusing. It would be fun to leave a stone tablet up there noting the JetSki came from Noah's Ark and was used to scout for dry land during the big flood (and also for harpooning sea dragons), but it broke down and had to be abandoned nearby, and ended up here when the waters receded.
- Speaking of archeologists of the distant year 3025, just downhill from the Angels Rest parking lot is Bridal Veil's town cemetery. I have a theory, or more of a suspicion really, that at some point centuries from now archeologists will take an interest in digging up cemeteries of old logging towns out of morbid curiosity about all the various gory ways a person could die in the timber industry of a thousand years ago, way back when the earth still had trees and oxygen.