Slide Show: The Hood Old Days
ca. 500,000 BCE Mount Hood erupts continually over a period of several hundred years.
ca. 10,000 BCE Native tribes like the Multnomah subsist on slopes and va
Photography by George Henderson
1857 Henry Pittock leads the first documented climb to Mount Hood’s summit (see Lore of the Mountain).
Photography by Mary Harrsch
1887 From a camp at 9,800 feet up the mountain, Will Steel and J.M. Keene set fire to a hundred pounds of lycopodium powder. Watching parties in Portland, McMinnville, Canby, Vancouver, Silverton, and Salem witness the blaze.
Photography by From the Steel Collection, Courtesy the Mazamas
1888 Oregon Alpine Club begins a movement to name Mount Hood a national park. Twenty-eight years later, Oregon senator George Earle Chamberlain authors a bill that would create a 688-square-mile national park encompassing Mount Hood.
Photography by Darrel Tarter
1925 Mt Hood Loop Highway is paved.
Photography by Clyde Putnam
1927 Summit Ski Area opens in Government Camp. Still in operation today, Summit is the oldest ski area in the Pacific Northwest.
Photography by The Oregon Historical Society
1935 Young architect John Yeon and a group of locals propose the mountain’s first ski lodge, siting their modernist structure on a ridge above Salmon River Canyon so that the winds would "scour" the snow off the buildi
1937 The Mt Hood Ski Patrol, the nation’s first organized ski patrol, is founded.
Photography by Ray Atkeson, from the Leuthold Collection, Courtesy the Mazamas
1937 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicates Timberline Lodge. Before the event, a Forest Service photographer, not realizing that press corps rules forbade showing Roosevelt’s handicap, snaps a photo of the disabled comma
Photography by George Henderson
1939 Norway’s Crown Prince Olav dedicates the Magic Mile, Mount Hood’s first chairlift.
Photography by From the Simmons Collection
1947 Nine climbers ascend the mountain via the South Side Route. Once on top, they assemble a bicycle and take turns riding around the summit.
Photography by From the Kearney Collection
1949 Mt Hood Ski Patrol volunteer Harold Johnson invents the Johnson splint. The simple foam-lined plywood device is used to stabilize leg injuries and is soon copied by every Western ski resort. It is still in use today.
Photography by Allen Delay
1967 The mountain’s newest resort, Mt Hood Meadows Ski Area, opens.
1974 (Pictured) Oregon State Highway Department plans for the Mt Hood Freeway are thwarted by a vocal contingent of Southeast P
2000 (Pictured) USGS fact sheet on Mount Hood says a cataclysmic volcanic event from the mountain is unlikely (but not out of the question).
2004 Portlander Tom Kloster tries
Photography by Austin Post, Courtesy US Geological Survey
2009 (Pictured) Hood to Coast is now considered the country’s largest relay race, attracting more than 12,000 runners each year.
2009 Transworld Snowboarding magazine places Mt Hood Mead
Photography by Katie Mills
2009 Still plagued by winter drifts at its front door, Timberline Lodge debuts a high-design, high-tech, igloo-inspired entrance.
Photography by Rhiza A + D
