20 thoughts on “Wolf Creek Highway, 1936”

  3. This just looks like back breaking labor. Notice how all of these men are so fit and trim? Just like the old photos of my family, all so thin! Yikes!

  4. igor: The Wolf Creek Highway was a 52 mile road from Portland to Elsie (US 26). The middle section of the highway (starting at NW Timber Rd), paralleled Wolf Creek for about 10 miles. Good question about old route 4. The mailbox says Ruby E Prince.

  5. i believe this is project is the source of the allusion we make today to a ‘shovel ready’ project! it looks like the dirt was being pushed over the top of the cut (note bulldozer on top) and shoveled into the trucks for use elsewhere perhaps even on another road. this portion of the roadway is not new.

    RE: route 4. i imagine it was the postal rural route number. postal carriers would fan out from the PO in town and follow prescribed rural delivery routes. when i was a kid in indiana our address was simply RR 1, Yorktown, IN.

  6. The varied work habits of workers are evident here, some stop working whenever there’s an excuse to do so, others keep their nose to the grindstone until they are told to stop. Many eyes are on the supervisor and superintendent (pipe) to gauge whether work will continue. Ruby E. Prince is off-camera holding a shotgun and telling them to “clear out” and get off her land.

  8. Could this be the same Ruby E. Prince? Seems possible given her date of birth. From findagrave. com:

    The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
    June 18, 1977 page 13

    Ruby Prince
    Funeral for Ruby E. Prince, who died Wednesday in a local hospital, will be at 10 a. m. Saturday in the Riverview Cemetery Chapel.
    Born in Portland in 1885, Miss Prince was the granddaughter of pioneer judge Philip Marquam. A member of the World Wide Church of God, she live at 7100 SE Division Street.
    Survivors include a brother, Richard W. Prince, and a nephew, Richard, both of Portland, and a niece, Charlotte Judy of Salem.
    Burial will be in Riverview Cemetery.

  10. I think I have found this location. Ruby E. (Elizabth) Prince’s 1947 voter registration shows she lived at 5605 SW Canyon ct. this address is next to the Sunset Hwy (US 26 ) just East of the Sylvan summit.

  12. So it’s possible this is close to the site of today’s photo. The topography has changed a lot if that’s the case:

  14. I love the workers work clothes: white shirts, slacks, leather shoes, vest & hats. Today our desk or office workers dress more casual. What a contrast to todays sloppy work attire.

  15. At least where I’m from, the old student directories are full of kids who lived on “RR3,” or Rural Route 3. Few if any rural roads had formal names and street numbers until the 90s.

  17. This photo says a lot on several levels. Firstly, it says something about the work force during the depression. There are guys there using shovels who have done that all their lives. They wear overalls and work shirts. There are others who were probably out of work office workers in office clothing, because that was all they had, out there to do anything to put food on the table. Look at the coats laid on the barricade near Ms Prince’s mail box. Some expensive stuff there.

    Secondly, technology was changing quickly. One guy on the big and very expensive Cat Diesel Seventy Five is pushing enough spoil off the top of the cut to fill two of those trucks in just one shove. I count 38 guys with shovels working to try to keep up. The “suits” to the left are probably trying to solve that bottle neck. The “suit” and probable foreman watching from the top of the cut have probably never seen that much spoil moving so quickly. The solution to the resource imbalance between the top and bottom of the cut wouldn’t really be solved until articulated loaders and tractor pulled scrapers arrived at least a decade later.

    @igor, the topographic changes are quite believable considering all the big machines that have been used on that stretch of ground in the last 85 years.

    Also, I witnessed a very similar scene in Ecuador in 1986 where shovel crews were loading dump trucks by hand. I guess it all depends on the cost of machines vs. the cost of labor in the particular economy.

  18. Vlad if you enter “Salmon Berry Shooting Pit Timber,Oregon” Wolf Creek looks to start just NE of this location off of camp 5 road and flows North toward the Sunset Hwy. and then flows East until it reaches the Nehalem River.

    Ruby E Prince in the 1940 US Census had a neighbor by the name of Thomas Pointer. In the August 6, 1936 Oregonian there is a short story about Thomas Pointer being assaulted in the early morning by 3 men in front of his house in Sylvan at Rt 5 – Box 539 as he talked to watchman guarding road equipment.

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