I’m going to cheat again with a professional photo of Cascadia from the archives. It appears on a postcard published by Pacific Photo Company, Salem, Oregon. A previous blog post with a postcard photo of Cascadia focused on the soda springs there.
This photo shows the falls. I vaguely remember hiking up to these falls as a child, even though a sign indicated that the trail was closed for safety reasons. (We wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop us, of course. ;–)
The primary interest here, though, is not the photo or the falls, but what is written on the back of the postcard. Even though it is only a few lines, it provides a glimpse of what camping was like at Cascadia in 1915. There are also some interesting bits of family information in these lines.
This postcard was sent by Arthur McClain (apparently—there is no explicit identification of the sender) to his parents. Here is a transcription:
Our camp neighbor killed a deer this morning.
Dear Folks
We are having a fine time. Anxious to know How Pa is getting along, also when C.E.’s will arrive. drop us a card. Don’t know when we will return. Had trout for supper. Fished this P.M. Seen these falls this A.M. Lots of places to see.
All are well.
Postmarked Cascadia, Oregon, August 20, 1915.
The only “C.E.” in the family was Arthur’s oldest brother Charles Edwin. Charles, Kate and family still lived in Nebraska at this point. Evidently the “C.E.’s” were planning a visit to Albany and Arthur was “anxious to know” when they were going to arrive. I imagine this was so the Arthur McClains could return from Cascadia in time to meet them.
The other thing Arthur was “anxious to know” was “how Pa is getting along.” I suppose this means Nathan was experiencing some sort of health problem at the time, but I have no information about it. Nathan was ten days shy of his 66th birthday when this card was mailed.
I am fascinated that the family’s return from Cascadia was open-ended. I believe at this time Arthur was still working for Veal’s Chair Factory. Was it common for laborers to have a large block of time off in the summer, I wonder?
One gets the impression with the references to killing a deer and catching and eating trout that camping at Cascadia in 1915 was much more of a “living off the land” experience than it typically is in modern times.
This postcard also answers a question posed in the previous blog post about Cascadia: was it the Hammells or the Arthur McClains that made regular trips to Cascadia in the summers? The postcard proves that at least some of those trips were made by the Arthur McClain family. Florence was five and Bernard was three on this trip in 1915.