Final scenery photo from Dad’s album, at least for now. Dad’s caption for this photo is simply “Loop Highway ’27”.

When I first looked at this photo, I had no idea there was anything above the hills in the background. But then I wondered what the guy in the foreground was supposed to be looking at. The hills just didn’t seem exciting enough to justify taking a photo of someone looking at them. Then I cranked up the contrast in the light areas of the photo and it became clear that there was a snow-covered peak against the sky above the hills. I’ve done what I could to bring that out in the above image, but still the peak is just barely visible. I’m guessing the peak was a little more visible on the print in 1927, but has faded in the intervening 80 years.

Before discovering the mountain in the photo, I had also wondered what “Loop Highway” referred to. Thanks to a document from the Oregon Department of Transportation (A History of State Highways in Oregon), I was able to determine that there are two highways in Oregon that do or did at one time have a name that included the words “loop highway.” One is the Rogue River Loop Highway, which does not seem to have come into existence until 1931. The other is the “Mt. Hood Loop Highway,” a name that was apparently first used in 1920. (“Loop” has since been dropped from the name and it is now just “Mt. Hood Highway” in ODOT parlance.) This highway runs from Portland around the south side of Mount Hood, then north to Hood River. It includes a section of US Highway 26 and Oregon Highway 35. (I guess the “loop” idea comes from the connection to the Columbia River Highway, by which one could complete a loop around Mount Hood and back to Portland.) I suspected this was the “Loop Highway” Dad was referring to, because of the historical timing and also his seeming affinity for that area. When I discovered the peak hiding in the photo, that pretty much clinched it.

But enough about technical photo stuff and highway history.

I don’t know who the person in the photo is. If you are able to recognize him somehow, please speak up. I presume the peak he is looking at is Mount Hood.

The summer of 1927 seems to have been an active summer. Uncle Will and Aunt Emma came down from Hoquiam and the family had the picnic at Waterloo Park. The Wrights were making plans to move from Goltra to Jefferson. Uncle Irvine and Dad late that summer went to the Palouse to work the wheat harvest. Uncle Earl and Dad climbed Marys Peak in July. And now we have this trip Dad took (perhaps with unknown others) up to, or perhaps around Mount Hood.

The irony is that with all that activity, I have no record of what Dad was doing or where he was living between late 1926 when he and Uncle Irvine returned from the apple harvest in Hood River, and late summer 1927 when they went to the Palouse. In the memories he wrote down, Dad kind of ran 1926 and 1927 together without providing any detail about this active period.