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Recreating the Mount Hood Loop

Hood Over the Gorge (2015)Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Washington. March 16, 2015

Section Index

This group will be focusing on exploring the history and tracing the original route of Ore. No. 26, "from Portland through Gresham and Bull Run around the south and east sides of Mt. Hood and to a junction with Highway No. 2, at or near Hood River;" modern US 26 and Oregon 35.

For the closing of the loop through the Columbia River Gorge, please visit:

Recreating the Historic Columbia River Highway

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March 4, 2020

Back in the heady days of 2014 or so, when I was probably at my most active on the HCRH project, I wrote, "Yeah, Recreating the Mt. Hood Loop? Maybe not quite. I would like to throw some notes in here, though, and I may flesh it out more at some point in the far distant future."

However, as I was running out of old CRH to explore in 2015, I started paying a bit more attention to all of those old, abandoned and downgraded fragments of the original highways around Mt. Hood and feeling the itch to start exploring them and documenting them and, as with the old CRH, time is passing, the old buildings are disappearing, and the history is fading unrecorded, or scattered between so many sources it is hard to track it all down...

Time will tell how deep I eventually dive into these old roads, for now my focus needs to be on repairing the HCRH website and finishing my work on that highway, but here and there, as I wrote in the past, I do hope to add quite a bit of content to these pages over the years to come.

Apparently, Tom Kloster has been feeling an itch about the Mt. Hood Loop, too. Below are links to his proposals for a Historic Mt. Hood Loop State Trail. As always, these articles are very well researched and contain much, much more information on the old loop than I have up on the site at this time, and are an excellent starting point for information on these old highways.

Links

Proposal: Historic Mount Hood Loop State Trail (Part 1 of 2)1920s traveler admiring the view from Laurel Hill on the brand new Mount Hood Loop Highway The year is 2035, and a family of tourists is just arriving at a local bed and breakfast in the village of…

Proposal: Historic Mount Hood Loop Highway State Trail (Part 2 of 2)Yellow paint still marks the old centerline of an abandoned section of the historic Mount Hood Loop highway, nearly covered with more than 60 years of moss and ferns. (Part 1 of this article introd…

Henry L. Bowlby, First Annual Report of the Highway Engineer for the Period Ending November 30, 1914

MOUNT HOOD ROAD

The great success that has followed the opening of the road from Tacoma to Mount Rainier in Washington has awakened the people of Multnomah County to the importance of having a good road from Portland to Mount Hood. A movement has been started by a number of prominent citizens of Portland to have built a modern highway from Portland to Mount Hood, and thence down to Hood River. At this session of the legislature a law should be enacted permitting Multnomah County to expend money in an adjoining county for the purpose of constructing a road in which Portland is so vitally interested, and that will be of state-wide importance.

At this time I want to call attention to the fine spirit shown so far by the leading citizens of Multnomah County toward expenditure of state money in that county. The county officials and their advisory board on road matters, consisting of Messrs. W. W. Cotton, A. S. Benson, Samuel Hill, C. S. Jackson, and W. B. Fechheimer, decided that in their opinion the best interests of Portland would be served by insisting that all of the State Road Fund be spent in other counties, notwithstanding the fact that Multnomah County pays about forty per cent of the taxes. If this generous spirit is adhered to, Oregon will soon have a wonderful system of trunk roads and the best of feeling will exist towards the metropolis of the State by the outlying districts. (Bowlby 8-9)

Samuel C. Lancaster, The Columbia: America's Great Highway

This great mountain range one mile and more in height has always been a barrier until now to wagon traffic. The earlier settlers used a trail and portage, or else crossed the range south of Mount Hood on the old Barlow trail. They scrambled up the east side of the mountains as best they could and on reaching the summit cut down a tree and tied it on behind the wagon to serve as a brake to hold them back when they slid down the western slopes. (Lancaster 1914, 58)