Next up we're visiting Harrison Falls, the main attraction in Oregon's Lindsey Creek State Park. Which is located next to Interstate 84 around eleven miles west of Hood River. If the park and the falls don't ring a bell, you're not alone. Your grandparents might remember them, though; they used to be highlights of this stretch of the old Columbia River Highway, but fell into obscurity after they were bypassed in 1964 when the old was transmogrified into part of I-84. Not only did the state neglect to put in an exit for the place, they also couldn't be bothered to put in a trail going there from the nearest exit at Starvation Creek, a mile east of there.
So after 1964 there was no official, legal way to visit the old park for just over half a century, until a new segment of the HCRH Trail was extended to Lindsey Creek from the east in 2016. It still isn't crowded, since it will always be a longer drive from Portland than a lot of the better-known classic Gorge destinations. Getting there from the Hood River side is still a bit inconvenient, as there isn't an exit at Starvation Creek, and you can either continue west on 84 to Wyeth and turn around there and get to Starvation Creek that way, or take the HCRH Trail from the Wyeth side (via another segment of the HCRH Trail that opened in 2019), or take the trail from Viento State Park instead. The last option adds another mile to the trip each direction, but it's a flat mile, so there's that.
Once you've made it to Lindsey Creek, there's nothing obvious there to suggest there's a big waterfall nearby. No signs, not even one with the name of the creek. Also no obvious trails, nothing. And you can't hear the falls, either, thanks to the noisy freeway right next to the HCRH Trail. So virtually everyone on the trail just passes on by and continues on their way with no idea what they're missing. But today is your lucky day, because I'm going to tell you the secret. It frankly isn't much of a secret: All you need to do is be on the left (south-facing) side of the creek, and follow the creek as it heads upstream. Once you're doing that you might notice an obvious boot path caused by other people going this way to see the waterfall over the past century and change. The creek bends to the left a bit, and once you go around that corner, bam, you're there. Seriously, that's all there is to it. I should point out that there was a downed tree in the way when I visited, and I didn't see any obvious way to get past it without going for a swim, but I have no complaints with the results I got. You might be able to get closer with some circus acrobatics, or you could chainsaw the log, or let the state know and wait for them to remember they own the place and send someone to officially chainsaw it, or just wait for the log to decay naturally. The last two options could take decades, and Legal is telling me to tell you not to even think about chainsawing anything ever, or do any acrobatics, and most of all not to combine the two, not even if you're a Cirque du Soleil cast member and you perform chainsaw acrobatics regularly in front of a live audience. Or, just in general, don't do anything that might give you an expensive case of "mental anguish".
This was my first time checking out the Lindsey Creek area, but I first heard about the place sometime around 1990. I was staring at a detailed map of the area for fun, as one does, and happened to notice it. USGS maps of the area have consistently marked a spot just labeled "Falls" on Lindsey Creek for decades, and the map I was looking at also showed the state park boundary, albeit labeled in a weird font that distinguished it from ordinary non-abandoned state parks. I knew enough of what had happened to the old highway to correctly guess that these areas further east had been closed off due to the freeway. I also owned a copy of the Don & Roberta Lowe guidebook 35 Hikes, Columbia River Gorge, which explained that the closest thing there was to an official way to explore Shellrock Mountain next door was to look for the wide spot on the eastbound shoulder along I-84, pull off and park there, and then hop a chain link fence. I even noticed other vehicles parked there now and then. But I just couldn't warm up to the idea of parking there and never tried it. In fact, I would go so far as to say I have a personal rule about not parking on -- or walking along -- the shoulder of a freeway unless maybe it's an emergency, and even then it's not Plan A. I know, I know, yet another controversial hot take out here on the internet, but I call 'em like I see 'em.
With the arrival of better maps (including the state LIDAR map that I keep going on about), and somewhat easier access to the area, it has come to light that the unnamed waterfall shown on old USGS maps is not the one we're visiting right now. This second waterfall goes by "Lindsey Creek Falls", and sources disagree on exactly how to get there. Zach Forsyth's waterfall book lists six more waterfalls even further upstream, although visiting them seems to involve hiking up another 2000 vertical feet and then canyoneering back down the creek. Or at least that's how he did it.
The next watershed to the west of Lindsey Creek is Summit Creek, and it's in a similar situation: The first waterfall (starting from the river and counting upstream) is known as "Camp Benson Falls", and the second goes by "Summit Creek Falls". It's maybe not the most logical system, and the names aren't actually official, but apparently the names all predate the 1964 closure so convincing everyone to listen to reason, for a change, and use Upper and Lower Lindsey Creek (and Summit Creek) Falls instead is probably not going to happen.
I had planned to check out Camp Benson Falls too on this visit, but when I got to where the creek was supposed to be it seemed to have dried up for the season so I didn't investigate further. Since then I've seen a claim somewhere that the creek will sometimes disappear into the rocks shortly after the falls at times of low flow, so it's supposedly worth checking out even if the creek looks dry where it meets the HCRH Trail. I have not personally witnessed this in action and am not claiming it's true, just relaying something I saw on the internet somewhere, as one does on the internet.
As you might imagine, 'Recreating the HCRH' has a lot of information to share about this area. The pages about the Summit Creek to Lindsey Creek and Lindsey Creek to Starvation Creek parts of the old road are good places to start. Also (via the Wayback Machine), Columbia River Images pages for Lindsey Creek and the other watersheds nearby. The Lindsey Creek page quotes Oregon Geographic Names as to where the name of the creek comes from:
"This stream east of Wyeth is reported to have been named for one John Lindsey, who took up a claim near the creek. Lindsey is said to have taken part in the battle at the Cascades in 1856, and was wounded therein. He was at one time a fireman on one of the river steamers. The Union Pacific Railroad had a station named Lindsey nearby in the 1930s."
I recall seeing additional factoids about this, first that his name might have been James instead of John, nobody really knows for sure, and secondly that he specifically took an arrow to the shoulder during an 1850s Indian rebellion. Another Recreating the HCRH page concerning the former bridge here cites Columbia River Images but just mentions the homesteading part. And really, being an early homesteader was a sufficient reason -- and by far the most common reason -- to get a geographic feature named after you in those days. (To any indignant descendants of pioneer homesteaders: I did not say easiest, just "most common". Regaling us with lengthy quotes from your ancestor's Dysentery Diaries is really not necessary.)
As for the train station, here's a circa-1920 map showing it, and a lower-resolution 1906 map not showing it. So that might be a useful data point. Either way it definitely predates 1930.
Some accounts go on to note that nothing else is known about Mr. Lindsey beyond the anecdotes relayed above. I did check the old newspaper archives on this point and can confirm he is seemingly not mentioned in the news at all during that rough time period or the following decades. In fact nothing interesting appears under any of the potential names until 1911, when we meet respected Portland chiropodist James Lindsey, who was arrested in 1911 for moonlighting as a mostly-respectable cocaine dealer. As in, respectable enough to get a really light sentence, due to being a family man and a pillar of the community and all, and also for an elderly female customer caught up the bust to not be charged with anything. But not quite respectable or well-connected enough to keep either of their names out of the newspaper. The moral of this story, of course, is to seek out and take good care of your regular customers at local media outlets, and make sure they know it. Because there's no way that last week was the last time they're going to need a little Colombian deadline powder, after all. Also it would be a better story if the creek was named after the later Lindsey, perhaps as thanks for his essential help with the hike up Mt. Defiance.
So, with those preliminaries out of the way, it's time for another timeline, that portion of a lot of posts here where it really helps to have a Multnomah County library card so you can follow along from home, if you like, or just to verify that the linked articles actually say what I'm saying they're saying. I tried to cast a wide net for material for this one: Lindsey Creek in the news, including any waterfalls on the creek, on the rare occasions they come up in the news. Or things connected to various businesses that tried to make a go of it here, and the railroad, which called this area "Lindsey" and would drop you off here if you asked nicely, and might even stop to pick you up if you asked nicely in advance and they noticed you in time. And a few bits about Mt. Defiance, roughly from the era when Lindsey Creek was the main way to get there. And some odds and ends about the life and times of Alfred S. Harrison, the falls' namesake.
- We start at the summit of Mt. Defiance, July 26th 1905, where a local religious sect was encamped awaiting the apocalypse. It seems a mysterious stranger had come to Hood River recently, calling himself "Daniel the Second" or "Second Daniel", with a dire prediction. He claimed Mount Hood was about to erupt, sometime between July 27th and August 10th, and catastrophic floods would follow, drowning anyone who remained in the Hood River Valley. Also there would be a plague of yellow jackets and other insects, plus a day of complete darkness prior to the flood phase of the apocalypse. So he and his little band of followers were planning to ride it out on the highest point in the area that was not part of Mount Hood. Or maybe go back to town and burglarize everyone who had skipped town until the 10th just in case. The article doesn't say that, of course; that's just me coming up with alternate theories, as I tend to do. It did mention the locals had considered forming an angry mob to go throw rotten eggs at the encampment, but soon had second thoughts. Maybe once they realized how difficult the hike would be, even if they weren't lugging crates of rotten eggs. I couldn't find a followup article on how things had turned out after August 10th, or the further adventures of Second Daniel and his exciting new religion.
- Speaking of Mt. Defiance, there's another Mt. Defiance in the Washington Cascades, north of I-90 and west of Snoqualmie Pass, a few hundred feet taller than the Gorge one. And both Northwest Defiances are most likely named for another, much shorter Mt. Defiance in upstate New York, near Fort Ticonderoga. So, the original wasn't the site of a legendary US victory, nor was it the most dramatic or imposing mountain for miles around. Honestly people probably just liked the name, regardless of it commemorating anything in particular.
- December 22nd 1911, a notice on the front page of that day's Oregon Mist (the local paper in St. Helens) from several local businessmen including Alfred S. Harrison, informing readers that they had agreed not to be open on Sundays, henceforth.
- May 1912: A horticulture expert of the day visited Hood River, toured a few local orchards, and proclaimed a bumper crop of apples was in order that year, perhaps six times larger than the previous year's harvest. I don't know how that year's harvest went in reality, but if he was wrong he could have done a lot more damage to Hood River than Second Daniel ever dreamed of (and stay tuned for more on this point).
I only mention all of this because the article has a brief aside about Mt. Defiance. It seems that around this time it was claimed to be "the highest wooded point in the United States". Which is quite an expansive claim, and I would go out on a limb and guess it's a bunch of malarkey. And if it was true, that would make it the highest point you could hike to and still have trees blocking the view. Which is not a great claim to fame, if you really think about it. - August 1912: A.S. Harrison was named president of the Columbia County Progressive Party, better known as Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party, created to support his third-party run for president that year.
- May 1914 article on the just-published report on the proposed Columbia River Highway route through Hood River County. The section of railroad from Lindsey Creek to Viento was said to prove that roadbuilding in this area of loose talus slopes was indeed possible.
- June 1914. The Oregonian and the Journal both raised an eyebrow at the divorce case of Alfred S. and Jennie M. Harrison, which he had sued for, on the grounds of "cruelty". They had been married almost 19 years and had six children, and resolved the custody situation the reverse Brady Bunch way, splitting the family down the middle: Dad got the three oldest kids, while mom got the three youngest.
Before this, Harrison's name appeared in the paper a few times in the "At the Hotels" section, a service newspapers used to provide if you wished to announce you were here on business for a few days. In 1900 he was listed as visiting from Kalama, WA, and in 1902 he was visiting from St. Paul, and from Scappoose in 1904, and living in Portland in 1908, and Vancouver in 1914. The 1908 and 1914 items showed the Harrisons traveling together, while a subsequent 1915 item had him visiting from St. Helens, solo. - January 1915, a bill was introduced in the state legislature to protect creeks along the new highway from being dammed for hydropower. "Lindsey Creek, forming Lindsey Falls" was among those listed for protection. That's all the description the article has, so it's anyone's guess which falls they had in mind.
- Also in January 1915, an account of through-hiking the nearly complete highway, in the brief window before there were cars on the road. Which sounds like it would be an interesting story, but it was written in some of the most overwrought purple prose of the 1910s, which is really saying something. They spent a week wafting about the gorge and pestering every Italian stonemason they ran across, eventually coming to the Lindsey Creek area, where they had a "leisurely climb well up on the base" of the mountain. Which I suspect is Pre-Raphaelite for wimping out after the first mile or so.
- June 1915: "5 Scale Mount Defiance", in which a Forest Service team summitted the mountain, but were forced by storms to descend 1000 feet before making camp for the night. Also they ran out of water at one point and had to descend further to find more. And they saw two deer, or possibly the same deer on two separate occasions. And if it sounds like the intrepid explorers and the paper were trying to put an unuly heroic spin on things, you would be correct. Elsewhere in the world, at that very moment, Ernest Shackleton was in the Falkland Islands, trying to arrange for a ship capable of rescuing his crewmen still stranded in Antarctica. So the heroic framing of this thrilling mountain adventure was just the spirit of the times. Nobody had the bad manners to point out that an entire doomsday cult had managed to camp at the summit a full decade earlier.
- Also in June 1915, an A.S. Harrison & Co. ad in the St. Helens paper, promoting their "really good groceries" and calling the firm "St. Helens' Leading Merchants"
- July 6th 1915 article previewing the grand opening of the new highway, with a motorcade of important dignitaries making their way to distant Hood River. After breakfast at Crown Point, they would sightsee their way eastward, having lunch at Lindsey Creek, then detouring around the unfinished tunnel at Mitchell Point, before exploring the Hood River area the rest of the day, with adventures further east planned for the following day. So, the place played a key bit part in a regionally important historical event, once.
- August 1915. Harrison was in Portland for a big trade show for furniture and general retail goods, and is listed along with a long list of attendees. At this point he owned and operated a general store in St. Helens, and looking at the attendee list it seems like most attendees owned small town general stores around the state, and were in town looking for products to sell -- since the whole idea of a general store is that you'd have a little of everything for sale.
- a 1916 announcement showed him marrying someone else.
- May 1916, two men were arrested in Hood River for a very 2020s-sounding crime, stealing a few hundred pounds of copper telephone wire from a jobsite near Lindsey Creek. The men were spotted by telephone linesmen and then trailed by a city marshal through "the jungles along the Columbia" and back to an abandoned power plant near Hood River, where they were seen stealing brass fittings from the old generating equipment. The wire was recovered from a local secondhand dealer who had bought it no questions asked. And the internet says meth had already been discovered by then (in 1893, by a Japanese chemist, to be exact). So the thieves may have even had a 'modern' motive.
- July 1916: "Mazamas To Ascend Peak That Is Overlooked By Most Climbers". The club had scheduled a hike to the top on their calendar for the year, and the author describes a couple of recent scouting trips to figure out a route, the first attempt being abandoned after the party ran out of water. The present-day trail did not yet exist, and they planned to start at Lindsey Creek as the most logical place, since the ridge to the east of the creek sort of segues into the mountain and the current trail mostly ascends there, though the trailhead is further east now.
- An item by the same author over in the Journal, describing the scheduled hike and an easier one over to Mitchell Point scheduled for the same trip, for club members who didn't feel up to tackling the main expedition. He noted that everyone would get an early start after camping at Lindsey Falls.
- August 1916: Harrison was busy co-founding the state grocery association and planning the group's first annual convention for the following month.
- Said convention was held in Pendleton during the Pendleton Round-Up and it sounds like everyone had a grand old time, with guest speakers discussing topics like "The Bread Problem" and "The Progress of the Coffee Peddler", and a discussion about the trading stamp question.
- But in December 1916, A.S. Harrison & Co. of St. Helens filed a dissolution notice with the state. Which might explain why the previous items were the last we hear about his involvement in the state grocers' association.
- A Mazamas group did the Defiance climb again in 1917. This time around it was just presented as a regular club hike, although the announcement notes it would be a steep, difficult climb, gaining 5000 feet over the course of four miles or so. Oh, and after following an initial bit of existing trail the rest of the ascent would be a strenuous bushwhack through brush and timber.
- August 1917, Harrison bought a shiny new Chalmers automobile, listed in a short-lived feature of the paper's motoring section naming everyone who bought a new car and what they bought. The Oregonian must have eventually realized this was not going to scale up very well once everyone was buying and selling cars.
- The same month, placed an ad in the St. Helens Mist advertising "My Delivery Team, harness and 2 wagons for sale, cheap. Talk quick if you want a bargain."
- Harrison seems to have owned an auto garage for a while, but it burned down in September 1917, also taking out an adjacent movie theater.
- June 1918, Harrison led Columbia County in buying World War I bonds.
- A month later, he joined with a few other local businessmen in starting a bank, the First National Bank of St. Helens. Here's a photo of a rare $5 bill issued by the bank in 1929, which is a thing private banks did back in those days. The bank was eventually absorbed by Portland's US Bank in 1933.
- Winter 1919 saw a record freeze in the Gorge, with the Hood River area reaching -27° at one point. Which was enough to kill off many of the area's apple trees. So anyone who caught apple mania after that national fruit expert came to town in 1912 (a few bullet points ago) and had planted nothing but apples off to the horizon was in for a rough time, since apple trees generally take about 8 years before they start bearing fruit, and this freeze came along about a year short of that. So in an extraordinary bit of bad luck, people who got into the business at that point could have lost everything without ever making a single dollar or producing a single apple. A lot of people who had the resources to start over got into pears after that as they're a bit more tolerant of snowpocalypses.
- In the early days of automobiles, license plates were reissued every year or couple of years, plate numbers starting over at 1 every time this happened. They were just digits, so personalized plates that spell things weren't possible yet, but you could request certain popular numbers and people would draw lots to determine who got to be that number for the next year or two. Harrison ended up with plate number 13 (November 14th 1919). The article doesn't say whether he requested the number or it was randomly assigned to him.
- The next time we hear about him, five months later, he'd had another big career shift. Now he was in South Bend, WA, as president and co-founder of the newly chartered First Guaranty Bank. Which became First National Bank of South Bend two years later, after scoring a "national charter", which is a special document that allows you to use "First National" in your name. I mean, your bank's name. Maybe your individual name too, though I'm not sure that's ever been tested in court.
- One of the privileges of being an officially chartered National Bank back then was that paper money entering circulation via your bank was printed with the name of your bank and the signatures of your bank's president and cashier. This page (at an Astoria coin dealer) has an image of a $20 bill issued through the National Bank of Commerce of Astoria. The author wanted more info about banknotes issued by the 7 other National Banks that existed within a 50 mile radius.
- It turns out this was actually the second "First National" sort of bank to be based in South Bend. The original one had failed in 1895, and the legal saga around this failure dragged out for years afterward. most likely related to the Great Recession / mini-Depression of 1894. There were probably a fair number of Pacific County residents who had lost everything after depositing their money with the bank's older namesake. I'm no expert on the banking industry, but given that history, I would have simply picked a different name for the new bank, or founded it in a different town if I was really attached to "First National". For a bit of contemporary contrast, consider Cincinnati's Fifth Third Bank, created by the 1908 merger of the city's Third National Bank and Fifth National Bank. I wouldn't call those the most creative bank names I've ever encountered, but at least they weren't duplicates.
- And in September 1920, fresh off of starting a bank, he started another bank -- Willapa Harbor Mutual Savings & Loan Association -- as a sort of subsidiary of First National of South Bend, operating out of the same offices. For most of the 20th Century, a Savings and Loan was yet another sort of bank with different rules and regulations around what it could and couldn't do. I suppose there must have been some sort of advantage at the time in having one of each kind of bank.
- June 1923, the Harrisons were heading to England trying to sort out some legal issues around a "family estate of considerable value" they had been trying to gain title to since before WWI.
- September 1923, Harrison had just returned from Europe and wanted everyone to know that the WWI cemetery at Belleau Wood was being cared for properly, though a fundraising campaign to purchase the land surrounding it was still ongoing. The last paragraph of the story adds context explaining his interest in the area:
Mr. Harrison visited the territory over which his son, Robert, fought during the war and was particularly interested in the splendid manner in which the graves are being cared for in the various parts of France.
Of course that was over a century ago, back when people were primitive and unsophisticated. Now it's 2024 and we live in the future and we just re-elected a bigly orange president who says the people under all those headstones were "losers" and "suckers" and you had better not disagree with him, or else. - December 1923, Harrison took out an eight-year lease on the Gale Hotel in Dallas, OR.; in August 1925 the hotel was reported sold by Emma V. Harrison of St. Helens, partly in exchange for the Campbell Hill Hotel in Portland at what's now NW 23rd and Burnside, and an ad the next month described her as the owner and manager.
- May 1925, a Trails Club trip up Mt. Defiance, but starting from the Green Point area to the south. Which is said to be a much easier route in the present day, though it may have been harder a century ago. From the summit they would then descend the old-school hard way and end up at Lindsey Creek. The hike would be led by someone named "Harold Bonebrake". Which is possibly not a good omen, if you've ever had the pleasure of descending that trail.
- March 1926: Harrison popped up again, now a Portland resident again, and petitioning the Oregon state engineer for a permit to take water from an unnamed stream in an unspecified location, for domestic purposes.
- A typical ad for Harrison's Auto Camp in the June 5th 1927 Oregon Journal, listing the place's various modern amenities.
FREE
Picnic Grounds
Harrison's Auto Camp, 56 miles east of Portland, Columbia Highway, at Lindsey Creek Falls. 2-room cottages, best of water, lights, fountain service, lunches, groceries. Phone, through Hood River. Write Wyeth, Or. - Harrison Auto Camp hosted a wedding in December 1927. So I imagine they must have had indoor facilities for hosting it, given the usual Gorge weather in December.
- In fact a small item on January 7th 1928 has a couple of photos of the Harrison home at Lindsey Creek, which was flooded after the creek became dammed by snow and ice.
- July 1928 article reprinting some facts from a Forest Service regional fact sheet. Basically an FAQ, decades before the term was coined, and compiled by several Forest Service employees, including Albert Wiesendanger, of Wiesendanger Falls fame. It included a list of heights of various Gorge waterfalls, ordered west to east, which informs us that that "Lindsey Creek Falls" is 104 feet high, while "First falls west of Starvation Creek" (which should be Cabin Creek Falls) comes in at 93 feet, and equally obscure Moffett Creek Falls at 74. A similar list printed in May 1986, on the publication of Gregory Plumb's waterfall guide, says the falls are 160 feet high, and located 1.25 miles up Lindsey Creek. Harrison Falls didn't quite make that list.
- In July 1930, Harrison wrote a letter to the editor about the state's admittedly boring license plates. He suggests they'd be much more distinctive if they were cut into an animal shape instead of always being a boring rectangle. The state never took him up in the idea, but in 1970 Canada's Northwest Territories adopted new license plates shaped like polar bears.
- Here's a 1931 Metsker map of the area (via Historic Map Works), showing where the Lindsey train platform/station/depot once was, which was east of the creek and Harrison's auto camp, located closer to Warren Creek than to Lindsey. Also the train always ran north of the highway through here, along the river. There probably wasn't much in the way of a train station here in the first place, but anything that once existed would almost certainly be under the westbound lanes of I-84 now.
- April 9th 1933. Harrison found a weird gun from the pioneer era and was donating it to the Oregon Historical Society after refusing several offers by collectors. The article includes a long, skinny photo of the gun, and explains what makes it weird: "The most unusual feature of the weapon is the manner in which the hammer is placed under the barrel instead of on top and operates as a combination of hammer and trigger. The barrel is octagon shaped and is about 44 caliber."
- In a followup item a few days later, we hear from a local gun collector who owned five guns of the same variety, and (it sounds like) talked a reporter's ears off about them while showing off his vast collection accumulated over four decades.
- April 21st, 1933. A Mazamas hike announcement: They would meet at Lindsey Creek and climb Mt. Defiance from there. Which is how the Mt. Defiance Trail used to work back in those days. The ridge east of Lindsey Creek is the one the trail ascends, so it's the logical place for the trail to be, but the additional flat stroll over from Starvation Creek became necessary after the state abandoned the park when the highway became the Interstate. The OregonHikers page for the present-day trail notes that the old trail route is still sort of visible at the point where it intersects the current trail. So I guess if you're somehow bored with doing Mt. Defiance the normal way, the old-school route might still be doable. Though you'd still have to walk to the trailhead, so there's no real advantage to doing that now.
- March 1939, the first time we hear about the Lindsey Inn, a "tourist camp" located here, was a brief notice that it had been sold to a Chicago buyer. Probably the same place as Harrison's, but without Harrison? This was followed by occasional real estate ads offering it for sale starting in 1942.
- Hood River History Museum archives have a 1930s photo of the Lindsey Inn, which was located on the south side of the highway and immediately east of Lindsey Creek. That page says the state bought it in 1943 for future highway expansion, but down below there's an item about the state selling it in 1944. So either that deal didn't go through or the state had to repurchase it again sometime before 1964. Or maybe the state bought the inn for the land and resold the developed part that they didn't want? Because 1943 is also when the state park was created, and the area just isn't big enough for a bunch of unrelated land transactions.
- September 1944. A roundup of State Highway Commission business included selling the Lindsey Inn at Lindsey Creek to the highest bidder for $320.
- August 1948, the State Board on Geographic Names renamed the lake at Lindsey Creek's headwaters, from "Mud Lake" to "Bear Lake". Because someone cared enough to get this on the agenda. Not sure if they were trying to attract more visitors or to ward them away. The board also made the name "Lindsey Creek" officially official at this point, and renamed nearby Warren Creek and Warren Lake from the previous "Warm Creek" and "Warm Lake". Warren Creek is the creek that flows through Hole-in-the-Wall Falls, and I don't recall the mist from the falls being notably warm, at least.
- December 1951, another Highway Commission roundup, awarding a $1.4M contract for widening the Lindsey Creek Bridge and for grading and paving 3 miles of highway in the vicinity.
The bridge's Recreating the HCRH page says the original was demolished "circa 1950". Which is probably taken from the highway's National Register of Historic Places nomination form. But that form also says the McCord Creek bridge was demolished circa 1950, when it actually served as the eastbound side of I-84 until it was finally replaced for real in 1997. But if the 1951 work was a widening, not a demolition, and if the 1964 Interstate work through here started with the existing US 30 and added westbound lanes where the railroad used to be, it's possible the original bridge or some part of it still exists in there, just extended beyond all recognition. - June 1953, mentioned in an article about great picnic spots across the Oregon state park system. The article includes a long list of state parks as of 1953, with details about each of them. The one here is brief: "129 acres, 56 miles east of Portland on Columbia River. Wayside picnic area along the Columbia River on Lindsey Creek."
- November 1956, a brief funeral notice for Emma V. Harrison. Says she was born in 1875 and had one child from a previous marriage. Could not find a notice for Alfred, but
- June 1958, mentioned again as a nice picnic spot in an article mostly about Wallowa Lake, last of a four-part series about the fun of driving around Oregon with a travel trailer.
- A July 1960 article about the newly introduced Oregon Sportsman's Guide includes the item about fishing Bear Lake (a small lake high up in the Lindsey Creek watershed) as an example of how thorough the guide is. Here's someone's Flickr photo of the cover of the 1960 edition, for anyone who wants to go wallow in cozy midcentury-ness for a while.
- The state park got a quick mention in a 1963 history of the state park system, which overall is a fairly dry timeline of land transactions. It does explain the reason for the park briefly: "Preservation of the aesthetic value of that portion of the Columbia River Gorge prompted acquisition of the park land.", but doesn't mention anything about waterfalls, or trails that begin here, or anything like that. We're told that 38,628 people visited the park in 1962, but they didn't bother counting in 1963, and also didn't explain why they stopped counting visitors.
- A 2008 OregonHikers thread mentions a long-lost Forest Service trail shown on an official 1963 trail map. It appeared to travel along the ridge between Lindsey Creek and Summit Creek, and -- seeing as the Mt. Defiance Trail was trail #413, and the Wyeth Trail -- the closest trail over on the far side of Shellrock Mountain -- was numbered #411, so naturally the one between them was numbered #412. Though that number has since been reused for a 1.5 mile trail in the Rainy Lake - Green Point area. The poster tracked down part of the old trail, which still existed thanks to being a forested ridgetop with very little understory. The thread calls it the "Lindsey Ridge Trail", but that name doesn't appear on the map that referenced it. One comment says it didn't appear on a 1930s map of the same area; it would be pretty sad if the 1963 trail was a recent addition given what happened the following year.
- August 1964, "Columbia Gorge Scenery Lovers Aroused Over Planned Changes of Railroad Route" The railroad-straightening and freeway-widening projects went hand-in-hand. It was 1964, so by the time the public found out what was coming it was already a done deal, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Same highway commissioners who gave us the Marquam Bridge, and attempted to bulldoze new freeways through NW and SE Portland in the name of Progress. There was nothing in the article saying the state was also about to cut off all access to several state parks along the route. They didn't announce that part; they just went ahead and did it.
- An April 1965 Journal article covers the damage done to state parks in the Gorge by the floods of December 1964. We're told that a number of the damaged parks would just be abandoned in place as-is, since they were about to be cut off from all public access by the new freeway anyway. The article continues:
Lindsey Creek State Park, 7½ miles west of Hood River, lies buried beneath stones. Fireplaces and outhouses are gone. So is the velvety moss-draped coolness.
It will be years before anything can grow. - After that Lindsey Creek fell out of the news until an April 1970 column by Leverett Richards, the Oregonian's longtime hiking columnist, describing the unmarked and long-forgotten Mount Defiance Trail. The Mazamas were just beginning to work on reviving it, and the trailhead had not been relocated yet, so the instructions start with parking along the shoulder of the Interstate and hopping a fence, and then you were supposed to look for an unmarked trail starting behind an underground cable sign. Richards describes the trailhead site as "the former Lindsey Creek State Park".
- May 1981 fishing article includes a list of potential fishing spots on the Columbia that you might have overlooked, via US Fish & Wildlife, and one of these is the pond formed by the railroad cutting across the bend in the river here. Going by the names I recognize, a lot of the sites on the list, maybe all of them, are lakes formed by the 1960s railroad-straightening project, which means the river-facing side of each lake is a steep gravel embankment with freight trains thundering by just steps away, while on the other side you're generally sandwiched in between the lake and I-84. So I guess it all depends on how much unpleasantness you're willing to tolerate in exchange for maybe catching a fish at some point.
- By 1982 the Mt. Defiance Trail had been rerouted to the present-day arrangement, starting at Starvation Creek and following a stretch of the old highway for a while before heading uphill. Lindsey Creek gets a mention as scenery in this Roberta Lowe column about the trail. Here's her cheerful description of how hard the trail is:
Some mountaineers quip that perhaps you need to climb Mount Hood in order to get in shape for Mount Defiance. Actually the latter isn’t that hard but how you feel during and after the hike is a good indicator of your physical condition.
Lowe continues by noting that the summit would still be covered in snow in early June, and offers some advice on making it to the top anyway. Which might actually be an ideal time to go, assuming the nasty bitey black flies at the top haven't hatched yet or are dormant under the snow. And also assuming there's still snow at the top in June in the 2020s. - June 1984, A visit to Lindsey Creek was part of a big festival of organized Gorge hikes, organized by Friends of the Gorge. The hike description is a real puzzle: "Hike from Starvation Creek Park to Hole-in-the-Wall Falls and Lindsey Creek. Climb 1000 feet to hanging valley of Warren Creek for views and wildflowers. Then visit Perham Creek and viewpoint. Elevation gain 500 feet, four miles total." The first sentence is covered by the present-day HCRH Trail, and the Warren Creek part might be a spot early on along the Starvation Ridge Trail, while Perham Creek is a couple of miles further east, and a viewpoint there probably means doing part of the old Wygant Trail. Not sure how you fit all of that into a four mile hike, but ok.
- After that, Lindsey Creek didn't appear in the news again until 2011, when a lost, injured hiker was rescued there, three days after tumbling off a cliff and breaking a leg. In a followup story she said she survived by eating berries and caterpillars (!) and tried a slug but found it inedible.
