Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

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Sore Feet
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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by Sore Feet » February 21st, 2014, 7:09 pm

Mystery Falls 1 - Fairly sure this one is Union Creek Falls along 410 east of Chinook Pass. The perspective it's shot from I think is what is accessible now, but now there's a big ol' logjam in there and it looks rather different. I'm only 70-80% on this one though, because it's from a strange enough angle that I can't make it line up quite right.

Mystery Falls 2 - Spray Falls in MRNP.

The pic of Margaret Falls captioned as Basaltic Falls is indeed mislabeled, and the listed height is definitely way too ambitious, but it is the tallest waterfall in Mount Rainier National Park (as well as the tallest waterfall in Washington south of Interstate 90). The reason there are no pictures is even to see it from a distance you have to expend a significant amount of effort, and the general prohibition of off-trail travel in the Paradise area keeps most everyone from exploring the ridges which run east from the Paradise Glacier where it can be seen from a distance. This is what you can see from Stevens Ridge east of the Williwakas Glacier:

Image

Getting up close has been on my hit list for a loooooong time, but it's also a long off-trail hike (something like 4 miles from Box Canyon), and looks like it will be considerably brushy. I'm tentatively planning on taking a stab at it this year however. The picture(s) shown above show about 900 feet of the total falls.

aircooled
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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by aircooled » February 22nd, 2014, 8:10 am

Fantastic photos! Thanks for posting. :)

I've found references to Beacon Rock from the early explorers in the late 1700s. Perhaps different people had different names and they switched around until one stuck?

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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by kepPNW » February 23rd, 2014, 7:08 am

aircooled wrote:I've found references to Beacon Rock from the early explorers in the late 1700s. Perhaps different people had different names and they switched around until one stuck?
This got me curious! Found this reference.

I didn't know William Broughton had gone that far upstream. Seems that was his turnaround point, and L&C had his maps and knew what Broughton had named things. I always wondered where L&C had pulled that name from, and now it turns out they hadn't! And it also helps me understand why Clark called it "Beaten Rock" - it was just another of his infamous misspellings. Huh!

EDIT: Okay, maybe scratch some of that? This reference conflicts with that earlier one on who actually named it. Hmmmm...

Both say the Castle moniker came later, during Astor's time.
Karl
Back on the trail, again...

payslee

Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by payslee » February 23rd, 2014, 1:11 pm

Sore Feet wrote:Mystery Falls 1 - Fairly sure this one is Union Creek Falls along 410 east of Chinook Pass. The perspective it's shot from I think is what is accessible now, but now there's a big ol' logjam in there and it looks rather different. I'm only 70-80% on this one though, because it's from a strange enough angle that I can't make it line up quite right.
How about this for a possibility: Christine Falls before they put the road in?

Since the other photos from that book included Carter Falls, Spray Falls, and Margaret Falls, I'd give good odds on it being another of the Rainier falls. But there are a lot of those to choose from. This might be wishful thinking on my part, but I like the idea.

-payslee

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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by Splintercat » February 23rd, 2014, 10:15 pm

Fun! Thanks for posting, Payslee! :)

The Yocum Falls shot is unusual -- most of the old photos show the full extent of the falls (beginning with the slide at the top that begins a few yards downstream from the Mirror Lake TH bridge over Camp Creek). This is the bottom tier -- here's what it looked like in 2005, for comparison:

Image

I'm gonna go even FURTHER east on the "Bull Run" photo, if that's not a doctored view of the mountain on the horizon, that is. It looks to me like the due north profile that you'd get from Defiance -- or possibly somewhere on the south slopes of Defiance/Green Point Mountain. There was a lot of logging in that area at the turn of the century, so it wouldn't have been unusual for a photo like this to pop up. This is the perspective today:

Image

Hmm... not sure, though...

Tom :)

payslee

Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by payslee » February 24th, 2014, 8:49 am

For the Bull Run photo, I'm liking the Indian Mountain (or close to) candidate. Peakfinder shows the prominent ridge on the left as Lookout Mountain, and the bump that you can see in front of Mt. Hood as Lost Lake Butte.
IndianMountainView.jpg
Peakfinder is super-duper awesome, btw, if you've ever had trouble figuring out what you were seeing from the top of some mountain, or even were having an argument about what was on fire as seen from your office window (although that was a bet I lost :-( )

-payslee

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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by Splintercat » February 24th, 2014, 11:37 am

Hmm... could be, although it would have to be much lower... than the summit. Here's the view from the lookout site (2011):

Image

This is a tough one, and it's the mountain detail that's throwing me off. If you ignore the details on the north side, it starts to look more like the south side profile, as viewed from somewhere on the south side of Larch Mountain, low enough for the lower ridges to be hiding the mountain a bit. Hmmm...

...trying... to... pull... myself... away....

Tom :D

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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by Sore Feet » February 24th, 2014, 7:46 pm

payslee wrote: How about this for a possibility: Christine Falls before they put the road in?

Since the other photos from that book included Carter Falls, Spray Falls, and Margaret Falls, I'd give good odds on it being another of the Rainier falls. But there are a lot of those to choose from. This might be wishful thinking on my part, but I like the idea.

-payslee
No, definitely not Christine Falls: A) there's never been a lower step to it as the picture depicts, B) there's no way to achieve a view of it from the angle shown (the photo would have to have been taken in the canyon, well below the crest of the falls, and as the lower tier is only 37 feet tall the height descrepancy wouldn't match up. Also, before the stone bridge was built, there was a wooden bridge set back around where the current viewpoint is, and I have never seen a picture of the falls taken pre-stone bridge which leads me to believe that the falls were difficult to see until the stone bridge went in.

It certainly could be something else in the Mount Rainier area, but nothing comes to mind more than Union Creek Falls. There is something about it that I can't quite place that makes me think of another waterfall though, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which.

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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by airoff » February 24th, 2014, 8:43 pm

Could Grant('s) Castle simply be Rowena Crest? Awesome thread, payslee!


http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/ ... crest.html

Upon further review I don't think that's correct. Per this citation, that's the North side of the river.





http://books.google.com/books?id=hXUUAA ... eIf7z6o2EA

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Re: Old Oregon photos with some fun mystery ones

Post by viking » February 24th, 2014, 11:26 pm

Tom, thanks for throwing some mud on my Indian Mt photo site for the Hood pic. Looking closer is that Barrett spur in Payslee's pic? And the right side of Mt Hood looks south sideish. Also I'm thinking the drainage looks like is flows Rt (west). Both of your photos drain to the Lt (east), the 23rd pic (Defiance?) shows the Hood river valley so it is out and the 24th (Indian?) is way to rough terrain in the foreground so it is also out. Mt. Talapus looks right up the west draining Bull Run River so that should look much less rugged. Could the bump up close be Bald Mtn? If we could see Illumination rock that would help, but I think that is just the blurriness of the old photo. Anyone have a good file photo of Hood from Mt Talapus so I can get all these quads off my living room floor?

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