Page Index

"Just outside the city limits of Troutdale, the entrepreneurial spirit caught fire as the cars started rolling east on the new Columbia River Highway. Hot dog stands, tea rooms, ice cream parlors, taverns, and fine dining establishments were erected within the first five years after the highway opened. Service stations and auto repair shops sprouted up from downtown Troutdale all the way to Bridal Veil. Flower stalls and jelly stands were set up at the side of the road, reeling in passersby for some home grown or homemade wares. Accommodating all those travelers became an economic boon to a little burg previously best known for smelt runs in the spring. Troutdale hit the maps, and the hamlets that lay along the highway farther east capitalized on each car that stopped."

1946 State Parks Report: Introduction

The descriptions and histories the several state parks situated along or adjacent to the Columbia River Highway in its scenic march up the river, merge into and are so much a part of the natural and historic features of the non-park areas that, except in a few outstanding instances, the parks are a part of the general picture as viewed by the traveler in passing through this area.

In the Gorge section, state park history began in 1922 with the purchase of certain small tracts for the protection of slopes along the Hood River loops. Sheridan Park, also in Hood River County, adjacent to the Bonneville Dam site, was purchased in 1923. The first tract acquired in Wasco County was the Meyer Park, a 1924 gift area. The Guy W. Talbot Park was the first Multnomah County tract, a gift to the state in 1929. Since then the acquisition of state parks in the Gorge has gone on in an orderly succession of well chosen sites, selected by Samuel H. Boardman, State Parks Superintendent, with his usual discriminating care. As of December 31, 1944, the aggregated 1,883 acres, 1,431 acres were gifts to the State and 452 acres were purchased.

Ranging from Portland eastward to The Dalles, the first state owned park area along the Columbia River Highway is a tract of one acre, situated just above the lower Sandy River bridge; the last one the the Lewis and Clark Plaza, just within the city limits of The Dalles.

W. A. Langille

State Parks Historian

December 5, 1945

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