MT HOOD HISTORY

Oregon's Historic Tollgate and the Treacherous Laurel Hill

Sections of Mt Hood’s Barlow Trail

Just over 160 years ago, Samuel K. Barlow opened his newly cleared toll road from Mt. Hood to Oregon City.  From July 1846, Oregon Trail pioneers could forgo the expensive, often hazardous riverboat voyage from The Dalles, instead traveling overland on the last leg of their journey.  That would take them days, sometimes weeks.  Today you can follow the Barlow Road to the mountain and back in a few hours.  Yet you don’t have to miss the interesting sites still present from pioneer times.  Insert the Barlow Road Driving Tour CD in your car’s CD player, and you’ll have your very own tour guide to over 20 landmarks along the way.

As you roll along the route dotted with the “Oregon Trail” historic marker, you’re tracing the steps of the nearly 10,000 emigrants that followed the Barlow Road every year from 1846 to the early 1860’s.  It’s easy to see why the road is often called the one achievement that did most for the Willamette Valley’s future prosperity before the railroads were built.  However, although Sam Barlow charged what were then steep fees of $5 a wagon and ten cents an animal, that prosperity never extended to his own fortunes.  He terminated his partnership on the road with Philip Foster in 1848.  Foster, unusually for him, didn’t turn a profit either, and he sold the road in the 1870s.

Tolls were still being collected in 1903, when Portland auto dealer John B. Kelley drove the first car through a tollgate on the way to Government Camp.  After that, automobile stage lines began operating Portland to Mt. Hood routes.  In 1913 Ivan M. Wooley began his mountain shuttle business, driving his 1907 “4-48” Pierce Arrow.  Though he was an experienced driver, the mountain road was still rugged in those days.  He, like other travelers, faced challenges such as deep, slippery mud in the rainy season, and steep Cherryville Hill, paved in planking that tended to break up into splinters.

Early travelers and roadtrippers could take a break at Welches, where Billy Welch and his wife, Jennie Faubion, were offering lodgings from the late 1800’s.  Many other early settlers including the Tawny’s, the McIntyre’s and the Rowe’s also offered lodgings.  Today Billy Welch’s property is the site of the luxurious Resort at the Mountain, and Billy Welch’s cow pasture is now the Resort’s 1st 9 of a 27-hole golf course.

You’ll find a replica of the Barlow Road’s last tollgate in the Rhododendron area.  (There’s also a campground nearby called Tollgate, so look for the historical site marker.)  There were four earlier tollgates at various points on the trail.  The last one operated until its discontinuation in 1915.  Two maple trees, planted to either side of the gate in the 1880s by the last tollgate keeper, still stand there and have recently been granted historic tree status.

At Laurel Hill, located just west of the Mirror Lake trailhead and Government Camp, older, bigger trees served as anchors for lowering wagons by rope down an extremely steep slope.  You can still spot rope burn scars on some trees to this day.  Other trees were felled and tied to the wagons as dragging brakes.  Even so, as Sam Barlow’s son William said, the wagons sped down the hill like “a shot off a shovel.”  You’ll want to see this to believe it, but do note it’s much easier to visit the site when traveling eastbound.  There’s a car pullout area on that side, between mileposts 50 and 51.

These are only a few of the historic locations you’ll see when you follow the Barlow Road Driving Tour.  If you’re in the mood for even more adventure, see the article in this issue on the Mt. Hood Scenic Byway and the Mt. Hood Infinity Loop.

 

May/June 2008 « Back to this issue...