Peg Willis, Building the Columbia River Highway: They Said It Couldn't Be Done
In 1845, only two years after the Immigrant Road began bringing people to Oregon, Samuel K. Barlow stepped forward to make a change. Barlow, unwilling to make the trip down the Columbia, teamed up with Joel Palmer, fellow traveler, and they managed to beat their way around the south shoulder on Mount Hood to arrive in Oregon City in the fall of that year. The following spring, Barlow joined with Philip Foster to create a road for wagons around the south side of the mountain, thus bypassing the treacherous stretch of river. They called it the Mount Hood Toll Road.
...
The Barlow Road, as it came to be called, was treacherous at best -- especially the stretch called Laurel Hill -- and more than one wagon as smashed to bits as it attempted to travel this "road."
Peg Willis. Building the Columbia River Highway: They Said It Couldn't Be Done. Charleston: The History Press. 2014. 16-17
Kathie Durbin, Bridging a Great Divide: The Battle for the Columbia River Gorge
Between 1843 and 1845, thousands of settlers took to the Oregon Trail. Some traveled overland around Mount Hood on the Barlow Trail. (Durbin 15)