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The Hood River Glacier, Hood River, OR., August 20, 1903, page 4

TRIP TO TROUT LAKE

Your correspondent visited Trout Lake a few days ago and is impressed with the fact that the country that surrounds the lake has before it a great development. It is worth one's while to take the trip, and we recommend it heartily.
One leaves White Salmon at 7:30 a.m., if this stage gets off on time, and it generally does. The vehicles of the stage company are quite comfortable, and you are whisked off up the road at a good jog. There is always some good-natured sparring for available seats, and the seats next to the driver become an object. The first mile of jostling forces the elbows into some systems; feet become comfortably stowed and good fellowship asserts itself at once. Professional men become boys again; staid school marms lose their severity and even throw violent kisses at scare-crows in neighboring fields and gardens; the driver cracks his way and the four horses seem to partake of the spirit of fun. The Kodak man is along and all pose for a group picture; and what a picture is! A quarter of an inch of dust is over every face, except where it has lodged in drifts by the side of the nose or at the ears. One tries to wash his face at a roadside brook and all give him the ha-ha! For his face is no longer dust, it is mud.
The falls are worth seeing. They are about 8 miles from White Salmon. The fall is not great, but there is something very charming about the scene. A suggestion of power; a nameless lapse of time and of waste. One might study it for hours. Some day, the man will harness and use it, but where shall you and I be then? What industrial end will it serve? What then will be the development of the country?
The timber, mostly fir with an under-growth of vine maple, is superb. One needs to see it to appreciate it - great, tall, stately, and I was almost going to say heroic trees, straight and massive and lofty.
At Husum, 10 miles from White Salmon, we come to the picturesque home of Mordecai Jones, an Englishman of means who loves Nature and books. He and his estimable wife are hunters, and one of the spacious rooms is almost an arsenal. Guns of every size and type. Twenty-eight dogs await their call to the chase. The floors are covered with rugs of great beauty, and the visitor has no difficulty in saying that this is an ideal country home of in English gentleman of refinement.
The village of Trout Lake is a thriving one. Two stores carry a stock a general merchandise - the Chapman Bros., long established, and Messers. Wolfard & Smith, the new men in the field. Both do a good business. Mr. Smith very kindly took your correspondent over to the creamery, which has so completely divested the milk output of the splendid dairy section as to make butter a scarce article. The business has been running about three months, and up to this time 19 farmers are contributing their milk output to the creamery. Most of these farmers buy the butter, selling all their milk. The cheese factory is a commodious neat, well-arranged building, light and airy. We found the cheese room full of as a fine a product as a creamery could turn out.
Some 4,000 pounds of milk are used daily by the Townsend Creamery company, who charge the farmers 2 cents per pound for making and marketing, leaving the farmers a net profit of 28½ cents per pound. Two hundred cows now supply the milk. The herds are yet small, the largest single dairy herd, in milking, being 33 cows. But this is only the beginning of a growing business with a great future. The herds are in fine condition. The man in charge of the factory is a master at the business, and the cheese product commands the very highest market price.
The whole country has a prosperous air. New buildings dot the plain and the farmers are well-to-do. The climate is good; water - pure and sweet and clear as crystal -- is plentiful, and this is the home of the clover.
We took a boat ride on Trout Lake with Judge Frazer of Portland at the oars. We traversed the beautiful little lake and followed up Trout Creek, its inlet. The water of the stream is very deep and so perfectly clear that trout by the scores may be seen sporting in its depths or darting before the boat. A finer stream of purer water cannot be found anywhere.