By Marie Kennedy, The Mountain Times
The towns that dot the map from Government Camp through Hoodland and down into the City of Sandy,have unique stories to tell. This is the first in a series, exploring the origins of our community names along with some intriguing and offbeat facts.
MOUNT HOOD
Let’s start at the top. Mount Hood stands tall, a prominent backdrop for the Portland skyline. The mountain offers a pristine water source, scenic beauty and recreational resources.
The name we use today, Mount Hood, was created by British explorers, not Americans, nor the Indigenous peoples who knew the mountain best. In 1792 Lieutenant William Broughton of the Royal Navy was exploring the Columbia River, and officially recorded the mountain looming in the distance.
He wrote “… A very high, snowy mountain now appeared rising beautifully conspicuous in the midst of an extensive tract of low or moderately elevated land…” He named the mountain after Lord Samuel Hood, an admiral in the Royal Navy who had authorized the expedition to the Pacific Coast.
Mount Hood is also a volcano, lest we forget, although it is considered dormant for now. Scientists date the last major volcanic activity to sometime around the 1780s not long before the Europeans discovered it. Tree ring dating shows that the eruptions could have continued for up to a decade.
By the time that the American explorers Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805, they described a river that was clogged with debris and called it Quicksand River. We now know it as the Columbia River.
WY’EAST
Many believe that Wy’East was the Native American name for Mount Hood. However, the name came from a legend written into a late 19th-century novel by Frederic H. Balch, Bridge of the Gods. Although Balch did not use the name Wy’East in his book, a popular play produced in 1911 that was based on Balch’s book did mention it. Additionally, 20th-century scholars may have also used some creative “historical rewriting” to push the theory.
The lands surrounding Mount Hood were home to several Indigenous groups, each with its own name for the mountain. Wy’East was not one of them. Part of the legend talks about the Bridge of the Gods which was said to allow Native peoples to cross the Columbia River. It is possible that landslides and volcanic debris may have temporarily dammed the river, allowing passage by foot, so there may be some basis in historical fact.
The legend itself tells a compelling story though, with several variations. It tells of Loowit, a maiden who had captured the hearts of two brothers, both brave warriors. The brothers clashed in a fiery battle for her affection.
The Great Spirit Sahale intervened, tearing down the Bridge of the Gods in his fury. In an act of divine transformation, he turned the three lovers into towering mountain peaks. Loowit, with her beauty, became the majestic Mount Saint Helens. The brothers, once rivals, were transformed — one into the powerful Mount Hood, and the other into the more subdued but enduring Mount Adams.
HOODLAND
The region stretching from Government Camp to Cherryville/Aldercreek is commonly known as Hoodland. This name is reflected in various local entities like the Hoodland Fire Department, and Hoodland Thriftway (in the Hoodland Shopping Center). In the 1950s, early promotional materials started referring to this area as the Hoodland Valleys. The mountain was buzzing with activity. But where did the name Hoodland come from?
I asked local historian and well-known photographer Gary Randall about the origins of the Hoodland moniker, and of course, he had an answer. It seems the phone company first coined the phrase in the 1950s. In those days phone numbers included a two-letter prefix. This area used ‘HO’ for HOodland followed by 4 digits. There may have also been a Rhododendron exchange for the area, judging from the local listings of the time.
In 1966, the Silverton-based Interurban Telephone Company acquired the Hoodland Telephone Company. Hoodland was reportedly still using a war surplus battleship intercom system to provide telephone service to the Mount Hood corridor. In 1969 Continental purchased Hoodland and Interurban. (I still have the phone books to prove it… somewhere.)
Interestingly, the Hoodland phone service area had distinct boundaries. To the west, It ended abruptly on Cherryville, creating a situation where neighbors on opposite sides of this invisible line faced long distance charges to call one another, and long distance charges back in the day could be hefty. West of that line, the phones were part of the Sandy exchange, but within the Hoodland area, calls were local.
As a bonus, you only had to dial 4 digits to call within Hoodland. That was true until the early 1990s, when locals were given the option, for a fee, to make local calls to the greater Portland area. That seemingly small change altered life on the mountain for businesses and residents.
History lives and breathes here; its presence is almost palpable. This series continues next month with a look at our towns and communities and some of their quirky stories.