"Hill hoped to attract a Quaker community to eastern Washington. His plans never materialized, and the town buildings he constructed burned down several years later."

Historic Hood River: Columbus Townsite

Comment by Charlott, April 6, 2018

To the left of Stonehenge you see a row of basically 5 buildings. That is actually Maryhill. The first building is the Meadowlark Inn, then the Annex, then the Kidder House and then the Maryhill Land Office. The last one is debatable, due to the location in the photo. I really think it might be the Friend's Church that Hill built for his "folly of a community". That church only had one service ever held in it, a dedication. I still chuckle at the time I went up to where the church and Mary's Cottage were located. All that was left of the church was the deep basement with a cow skull and a beer can in it. Go figure that one out....Drunken cow..................

Hill built a big reservoir up above the area and it broke loose and the water came roaring down....thankfully the town of Columbus was a little ways downriver from where his flood went through.

I know Columbus /Maryhill from two time frames. My family from 1873 to the early 1900's and from the 1950's when good friends lived in the Kidder house and ran a rock shop in what had been the Maryhill Land Office. I knew the two house keepers that Sam Hill had at The Meadow Lark Inn. Both delightful little old English spinsters with a beautiful English garden on the side. I wish I had of known at the time that Clara and Lucy were in fact involved with him, as I can just imagine what I could have gleaned from the two of them....Sam Hill did not have any great wonderful feelings for anyone, which included his wife and two children, but he had great affection for these two, as they were given through his will the use of Meadow Lark Inn for the remainder of their lives.

Comment by L.E., April 6, 2018

If you take Highway 97 up the hill to Goldendale, you can pull off to the side and look down into the canyon where Sam Hill built his dam.

Comment by Arlen Sheldrake, April 6, 2018

...if not for the bad research (booze) by the Hill folk, the utopia would have been located in the white salmon area if I remember correctly...

Comment by nels, April 8, 2018

Arlen, you are correct. Hill was so impressed with White Salmon that he offered to buy that land but was refused with great anger when it was found he approved and partook of liquor.

"Hill planned the community of Maryhill, named for his daughter and wife and located near the town of Columbus, Washington, as an agricultural paradise “where the rain and sunshine meet,” as he liked to say. It was 1909. Hill was a prominent Seattle businessman who also worked for his father in law, James J. Hill, the “Empire Builder” of Great Northern Railroad fame. The Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway, a Great Northern subsidiary, was under construction through the Gorge, and that probably is how Sam became aware of the area. He knew that several farms in the area were quite productive, and that the prosperous apple-growing district around Hood River, Oregon, was a short distance downstream. Also, good timber was available a short distance north of Columbus. If the SP&S built a station, and if settlers flocked to Maryhill to farm and build houses in his little city, well, the rest would be history."

Historic Hood River: "GOOD ROADS" MOVEMENT 1912

Present that day were:

• C.K. Marshall

• O.H. Rhoades

• G.A. McCurdy

• Roy D. Smith

• W.L. Clark

• Murray Kay

• Samuel Hill (Host)

• Clarence Gilbert

• W.E. King

• C.P. McCan

• Leslie Butler

• R.E. Scott

Comment by Charlott, June 11, 2013

That is the fountain at the corner where you come up from Columbus (Maryhill) and make the turn in front of the old stone store to go out to the location of the Meadow Lark Inn, Annex, Kidder House, Maryhill Land Office and Stonehenge. I know as a child I even climbed into it on a number of occasions. it is still there. I do not know if it ever spouted water. There were water lines put in around there, but don't know when they were activated. There was water there in the late 1940's when Clara and Lucy lived there, along with Tiny Bishop who leased the land office building for his rock shop.

Comment by nels, June 11, 2013

Are those names in order, left to right, as in the picture? Love those hats and face hair.

Comment by Arthur, June 11, 2013

nels, I believe the names are left to right. That puts Sam Hill and Leslie Butler in the right place. Unfortunately the notes on the photo don't say for sure.

Comment by Christie, June 11, 2013

Sam Hill had dreams of a big community at Maryhill and tried to dam the creek and have water for his city. This was his fallback community after his plans for a city "where the rain meets the sun" (in White Salmon) were thwarted. He never was successful getting the water to his city and it was a huge failure. The fountain and the dam are both still there.

Comment by Charlott, June 11, 2013

If I recall the dam broke, at least once pouring water down the canyon. The most beautiful part of the "dream?" was Lucy and Clara, as far as I am concerned. At least they were the last people remaining in what became known as "Sam Hill's Folly." I always wished I could have seen the church and Mary's Cottage before they were torn down. I do remember the majority of the other buildings prior to their burning. Especially Meadowlark, Kidder House, and the land office. The land office had these wonderful old pigeon holes in one wall, like those of the old time post offices, but these were deep and that is where the maps were rolled and kept.

Historic Hood River: SAM HILL, AT YOUR SERVICE

Comment by Charlott, December 13, 2017

He did a lot of good, where roads were concerned, but had his "dark side" that is for certain, that most people are unaware of. He had a lot of visions of grandeur, which became known as "Hill's Folly." He went up to Columbus and fully intended to run the people who had resided there since its founding out, but their pioneer spirit was greater than his father-in-laws money and he failed. They never were impressed by him. Horrible husband and parent to say the least and all his illegitimate children running all over the place.

He never lived at Maryhill, only Clara and Lucy ever resided there and I knew them when I was a little girl.....

I can tell you where this photo was taken. On the little front porch of the Maryhill Land Company Office. Have walked on that porch and went through that door many, many times....

Comment by L.E., December 13 & 15, 2017

Seems like a lot of "good deeds men" in world history, also had a dark side.

Also seems like a lot of newcomers with grandiose ideas, don't mind moving in and telling the "locals" how they should live.

Hill like so many ambitious business men, had abundant energy. Some of that energy and money provided a way for farmers on the east side of the state to ship their product.

".....They formed the Washington State Good Roads Association and they chose Hill as president. Hill declared, "Good roads are more than my hobby; they are my religion."......

http://www.historylink.org/File/5072

Just think, we could have had Maryhill right here on the White Salmon bluff. Remember the story of Sam Hill ready to make the purchase of the Jewett Farm, but when he proposed an alcoholic toast, Mrs. Jewett nixed the sale.

The decision to make Bingen the Railroad Depot for the North Bank RR rather than White Salmon:

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~westklic/rrstobab.html

Historic Hood River: Roadbuilding at Maryhill

Comment by Charlott, August 2, 2018

...the St. James Hotel sat where Stonehenge is now. When he decided to build Stonehenge he moved it back and renamed it Meadowlark Inn. If you go up there now you will see a medium sized bush. That bush sat in Clara and Lucy's English garden.

"The prosperity, however, didn’t happen. Hill imagined that the warm and sunny conditions east of the Cascade Mountains and the rainfall west of the mountains somehow would meet in the Maryhill area and provide ideal growing conditions. In fact, the area is in the rain shadow of the mountains and receives about 11 inches of rain per year. Just 30 miles west, at the Hood River district Hill so admired, precipitation is nearly double — such is the nature of the rain shadow. Also unlike the productive Hood River valley, the soil at Maryhill was good for crops only near the Columbia; the soil quickly became thin and rocky away from the river, the legacy of repeated catastrophic floods at the end of the last ice age. And there is near-constant wind; summers are hot and dry, and winters cold and harsh."

"Nonetheless, the railroad stopped there and Hill succeeded in attracting a few new farmers to the area, and he established a ferry crossing at Maryhill. While the farms produced some notably good tree fruits, the production never was large-scale, and by 1914 Sam’s grand plans for a community of paved roads, new homes and surrounding productive agricultural fields had failed. He blamed the state of Washington largely, as he believed the lack of a state highway along the north shore of the river was a fatal blow to his community. But in reality, he simply chose a bad location. The ferry service wasn’t a great success, either. The service from Maryhill to Biggs, Oregon, began on Feb. 23, 1915, but did not last long. Like Maryhill itself, the ferry service was poorly located. The boat rolled hard in the frequently strong winds of the Gorge. It was a sidewheeler, and so with one side partially out of the water on windy crossings the other side overworked to keep the boat moving. During low water the ferry hit bottom on a mid-river gravel bar, and during high water the clearance below the Union Pacific Railroad bridge on the Oregon shore was too low for the boat."

Links

Old Links From Panoramio.com (dead site) for reference purposes...

Original 1909 fire hydrant from Sam Hill's planned Maryhill townsite (Photo by Scott Cook)

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/75997272

Maryhill-Columbus Cemetery (Photo by Pamela Elbert Poland)

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7295930

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