Ditto Wayside
Rainier Point
Route 2
I would guess that the big loop out on the point there would be Rainier Point, the Ditto Wayside site, but I am not sure. Taylor lists the location as Mile 47.7, westbound from St. Helens Road at NW Wardway.
Michael C. Taylor, Road of Difficulties: Building the Lower Columbia River Highway
...the site of Rainier Point and the Ditto Wayside.
In its fifth biennial report (1920-22), the Oregon State Highway Department noted that "a tract of 1.88 acres was acquired at a point along the highway about two and one-half miles west of Rainier, where improvements on the property adjacent to the highway constituted a serious obstruction to the view of traffic meeting at that point and resulted in a consequent hazard which could only be eliminated by the removal of the offending building.
The property in question, a strip between the old highway and the bluff, seems unlikely to have been an impediment to vision, although a bit small for the situation of a home. Fixed on the highest point of Rainier Hill, it commanded sweeping views of the river. The property belonged to prominent Rainier citizens, the doctors Johnson Frank Ditto and Florence Ditto who in 1929 moved their practices to Portland.
The State Highway Department developed a parking pullout on the site and a path to a natural spring. Renovations were made in 1941. Today no evidence of the wayside remains.
Taylor 72
