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The Hood River News, Hood River, OR., March 7, 1930, page 1

GORGE HOSPITAL RUMOR IS WILD ONE

Just where it started nobody knows, but here is a rumor which is gaining strength simply because everyone wishes it might be true. The rumor is that the Mayo Brothers, famous surgeons of Rochester, Minn., have purchased the Columbia Gorge hotel and will convert it into a western clinic under their world-famous name. The News has exhausted every source of possible information on this subject, short of writing Mayo Brothers and has drawn a blank in every case. Yet the rumor persists. Here are the facts, and if anyone can, in the face of these facts, justify the rumor, then anything can happen.
The Columbia Gorge hotel, which would be ideal for a great clinic, cost more than $400,000 to build and is located in one of the gems of western scenery. As a hotel it has been something worse than a failure. It was built to cater to the high-class tourist, but failed to attract them in sufficient numbers. Then the policy was changed to make it available to anybody who travels. But its reputation as a high-class hostelry persisted, and the very nature of the building and its setting was a standing challenge to the general run of tourists, whose limit is a modern auto camp, with room and shower. And so it was as great a failure, from a profit-earning viewpoint as a popular hotel as it had been as a high-class hostelry. Then somebody hit on the idea of a bond issue, to which certain good people of Los Angeles responded, but perhaps it would be better to write nothing more on this phase. Latest developments disclose that one of the bond holders, to protect his investment, bought up a lot of the bonds at a very much reduced price, and the story goes that he is willing to sell at a price that is astonishingly small as compared with the cost but a few years ago. And these are the facts at the News has gathered them.
Recently, certain good people suggested that the Columbia Gorge hotel would make a wonderful county hospital, and about the same time somebody recalled that one of the Mayo Brothers and visited the hotel last summer. From this, it appears, has originated the rumor that the Mayo Brothers have purchased the Columbia Gorge hotel for a Pacific Coast clinic. And, so far as the News has been able to learn, that is all there is to the story.