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The Hood River Glacier, Hood River, OR., July 24, 1913, page 1

VALLEY SHOWS RAPID GROWTH
Fruits Grow To Perfection
Commercial Quantities in all Varieties Shipped - Lumber Industry Prominent in Community - Mills Unique

     Every so often it is good for the people who live in a community to take a kind of inventory of themselves, their assets, opportunities and their development. This week, a red letter one marked by the second successful mid-summer celebration at Woodworth park, is an opportunity moment for Hood River people to consider what they have. Considering the point from which they started and the point they have reached, it can truthfully be said that no other rural section of the United States in a dozen years' time has made such notable progress. When it is known that just 13 years ago, the Hood River valley began to ship out its first carload of apples, when it is known that the big orchards of the present day for the most part were covered with forest trees, when it is known that the families inhabiting the district could be counted in mere terms of scores, then the man who has come to the region in recent years to aid in the development can grasp the extent and scope of the progress that has kept hasty and yet solid. That pioneers, who felled the first trees and planted the first orchards know these facts. The development of the district, the hardships and toils of the early days, and, best of all the rewards in after years, have been a part of their lives.
     Today Hood River computes its apple harvest in the hundreds of thousands of boxes. A pioneer in the industry in the beginning, it is now a leader. Other districts have grown up in other parts of the district, but the words of Hood River growers are potent.
     Today the Apple Valley grows other fruits in carload lots, as well. The pears grown here go out to the markets of the world. Hood River cherries have been found second to none and have been handled in large quantities during the past year.
     So predominant has grown the Hood River apple that any other industry in the valley is to a certain extent over- shadowed. Although local people do not stop to think about it, the Hood River valley is one of the Northwest's greatest lumber producing sections. In the Oregon Lumber Company's plant at Dee, recently destroyed by fire, and that of the Stanley-Smith Lumber Co., at Green Point, the community has had two of the most unique and largest capacity mills in the country. No mills are more talked of in lumber journals, and visitors from lumber producing sections in all parts of the country journey here to see the plants. The Oregon Lumber Co. mill was the first large plant ever to have been driven by electric power. The Stanley-Smith Co. has created comment by the logging system put into execution in the Green Point hills. The large logs are transported there by means of cable lines and huge donkey engines, as large as can be produced by the manufacturers.
     The managers of both companies, Chas. T. Early, of the Oregon Lumber Co., and J.E. Robertson, of the Stanley-Smith Co., have risen to their positions because of their practical knowledge of the industry and their executive ability. The two large plants employ, when running at capacity, approximately 500 men, an enviable payroll anywhere. The Dee mill, the debris of the burned plant of which is already being cleared away for the new structure that will rise there, had a daily capacity of more than 150,000 feet. The Stanley-Smith Company cuts 140,000 feet per each ten hours.
     The latter company has as its logging foreman, Alex S. Reid, said by lumbermen in every part of the northwest to be one of the most experienced men in cruising, handling logging apparatus and in handling the men under him of any in the great industry.

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©  Jeffrey L. Elmer