Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company Passenger Station

About this property

The Hood River station is a historic train station in Hood River, Oregon, currently serving the heritage Mount Hood Railroad. The station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 as the Oregon–Washington Railroad and Navigation Company Passenger Station. The station was built by the Oregon–Washington Railroad and Navigation Company, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, in 1911. Amtrak's Pioneer also used the station and nearby area from 1977 to 1997. The railroad first reached Hood River in 1882 with the arrival of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N). The OR&N built eastward from Portland, eventually reaching Huntington in 1884, near the border with Idaho. In 1882, a two-story wooden depot was built at Hood River. As the town grew, a new station was seen as necessary. The current building was completed in 1911, on the same site as the previous depot. In 1918, a runaway locomotive struck the west side of the station. After a series of corporate restructuring, the Oregon–Washington Railroad and Navigation Company was incorporated in 1910, still as a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad. Over the next decades, the Union Pacific branding replaced the Oregon–Washington Railroad. It its heyday, the station served inter-city trains such as the City of Portland, Pacific Limited, Portland Rose, and The Spokane. These provided connections with Chicago, Omaha, and Spokane, among others. The NRHP nomination for the building listed passenger and freight service as ending in 1958, but timetables for the Union Pacific show service to Hood River as far as 1969. The previously independent Mount Hood Railroad was purchased by Union Pacific in 1967. This line to Parkdale met the Union Pacific main line just east of the section. The original Mount Hood Railroad depot, east of this station site, was torn down by the Union Pacific in 1971. With the end of private inter-city rail in the United States and the formation of Amtrak on May 1, 1971, Hood River was initially not served. The station regained service with the formation of the Pioneer in 1977. Amtrak did not utilize the station building, and instead installed a 10 ft × 20 ft (3.0 m × 6.1 m) metal waiting shelter to the east. Union Pacific continued to use the building until 1984. On November 2, 1987, a group of local investors purchased the building and line to Parksdale from Union Pacific and formed the Mount Hood Railroad Corporation. The station was repurposed to serve as the headquarters of the corporation, and it is the present use of the station. Amtrak also began to use the station building in the early 1990s, but the Pioneer was discontinued in 1997. The Mount Hood Railway again sold to Iowa Pacific Holdings in 2008, and in 2019, county officials have indicated they are prepared to seize the property due to back taxes.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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