My wife and I grew up in the Yakima Valley, more precisely the Lower Valley in Wapato, Washington. So we have made dozens of trips home from Gresham since 1970. The drive is always a pleasure with the rare exception of a Gorge ice storm. The first leg is the Columbia River Gorge. Mountains, rivers, […]
The road building was slow. The emigrants had only axes and saws and only one grindstone in the entire company, therefore much of the clearing was done by burning. From mid-September through December, they battled their way through the thick timber of the Mountain’s southern flank. They realized they would not have time to finish […]
Autumn of 2020 marks the 175th Anniversary of the first attempted crossing of Mt. Hood’s Oregon Trail and the 173rd Anniversary of the first toll road—known as the Barlow Trail—over the Cascade Mountain Range. The Barlow Trail was the final overland link of the Oregon Trail that allowed emigrant travelers a cheaper, quicker but still […]