Hood River County, Oregon

  Towns & Places - Old & New

• What GNIS calls "populated place" has been redesignated City or Community. These places currently exist.
  
• Most of the places listed in the Community category also had elementary and/or high schools before consolidation of schools began or population began dropping off. When speaking or writing of his/her residence, your ancestor may have used the community designation rather than the actual post office name. For example, even though during my growing-up years all my family's mail was addressed to Hood River, Oregon, if anyone asked me where I lived I said, "Pine Grove."
  
• The Other Locales category refers to areas of the county, usually lightly populated, with no unifying social organization. They're "areas" as opposed to "places," and almost anyone you stopped on a Hood River street could tell you how to get there.
  
• Historical Locale and Historical Post Office refer to places that "were." The land is still there, of course, but the reasons for their existence, e.g., a railroad stop, no longer exist.
• In this era of global positioning instruments, the latitude and longitude of these places may be helpful to some, and for those who prefer to work from maps the USGS map name is given in the last column.
• Until June 23,1908 Hood River County was part of Wasco County, and prior to Wasco County's creation in 1854 it belonged to Clackamas County. Thus, if you have a letter written by your ancestor and sent from the Tucker  post office in 1893, you'll need to look for records in Wasco County. Similarly, if you can place your ancestor in the present Hood River County area prior to 1854, you'll be looking for records in Clackamas County.
  
• See http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~westklic/earlyhhr.html for a brief 1889 Oregonian article about settlement of the city of Hood River.