Hmmm.....I am having trouble getting a true perspective of this photo. This road is giving me trouble. The road that Sam Hill built is way up the hill on the other side of SR14. If this is the road going from Columbus up to Maryhill it most certainly doesn't appear that way today. I have never seen any remaining rocks or rock walls as shown here.

That white building down there with the 6 windows is the school house and the road through old Columbus went between it and the darker buildings on the right. The main part of town is obscured by the big poplar trees in the bottom left. The area where the trees are along the river was at one time owned by the Wren's (relatives of mine).

Good example of what the river looked like prior to dams. Lots of good farm land was wiped out.

The next time I go up I will try and see if I can locate where this was actually taken......3

Charlott on 2nd August 2018 @ 7:14am

I agree with Charlott, I don't recognize this rock wall. Traces of three roads coming up from the river remain. One west of Stone Henge comes up past the cemetery, one east of the monument similar to this and one in the bottom of the draw. blocked by rolling rocks.

Kenn on 2nd August 2018 @ 7:40am

There is a comparison photo here:
http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/ref/collection/barnes/id/39

1913??
The rows of trees look much younger than in this photo.

L.E. on 2nd August 2018 @ 8:23am

The photo says viewed from Stonehenge replica site. But Stonehenge was not built until 1918. Could this have been a road up to Sam Hill's hotel, which sat where Stonehenge now sits?

L.E. on 2nd August 2018 @ 8:27am

The original "Maryhill Loops Road" started down at the railroad. This part of it probably no longer exists, as US97 was built over that route. The piece that still exists, as Charlott describes, is above SR 14.

I think the "comparison photo" was taken in the winter so the leafless trees are less prominent.

Arthur on 2nd August 2018 @ 9:35am

Yes, the St. James Hotel sat where Stonehenge is now. When he decided to build Stonehenge he moved it back and renamed it Meadowlark Inn. If you go up there now you will see a medium sized bush. That bush sat in Clara and Lucy's English garden.

If this is the road up to Stonehenge I don't see any outcropping of rocks like this from the cemetery road, which goes off to the left side of this road, on up to the stone store and fountain. The cemetery road, which is on the high side of the cemetery goes on up around and used to link up at the top where Wren's homesteaded. Now it stops in the middle of a grape vineyard near the remaining portions of their house foundation. There was never any road up Sand Canyon as the spring came down through there and ended up at my great-great grandparents on the very sharp curve below the cemetery and back in there where that old gravel pit area is as they had 160 acres there.Trying to sit here and see the road up the hill I don't recall any real crooked areas like this and I was just up there less than two weeks ago. Apparently this was long ago destroyed. It is in the wrong location to have been washed out when the dam up the canyon broke.

Charlott on 2nd August 2018 @ 2:21pm

Major Bowlby and Sam Hill sitting at the Maryhill Grade.
http://www.washingtonruralheritage.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/klickitat/id/66/rec/139

L.E. on 2nd August 2018 @ 6:51pm

Also, here is a 1913 map of Columbus/Maryhill
I can't really tell much, but I think the school is the one Charlott points out.
http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/1567590/Townships+2+and+3+N+++Range+16+E+++Columbus++Mary+Hill/Klickitat+County+1913+Version+2/Washington/

L.E. on 2nd August 2018 @ 6:58pm

Does Mt. Hood look like it has been painted in to anyone else?

cg on 2nd August 2018 @ 9:28pm

ODOT's historian sent me some additional detail to help explain the context of this photo:

"The road shown in the photo was the bottom end of the Canyon Road, which started at the old Maryhill town site (Stonehenge), went down a canyon and then curved around to the west where the man is seated on the rock wall and farther west down to the lower town site of Columbus. It was the main route between the railroad depot and the Maryhill town site.

Samuel Lancaster built Canyon Road in 1911-12 as an experimental road for Hill. It had grade and curve restrictions, masonry walls, and durable asphaltic-concrete pavement. During a flood event in 1964, water raced down the canyon of Canyon Road and blew out the corner as the road curved to the west. You can see the damage on Google Earth.

The current alignment of US 97 bypassed the Canyon Road by the late 1940s. Canyon Road probably then served the local community until 1964. The Sam Hill Bridge opened in 1962 and ended the need for a ferry.

The Upper Road is the one that we now take to get from Stonehenge to get to the lower town site. It is steeper and older than the Canyon Road. However, Lancaster used it for pavement experiments."

Arthur on 3rd August 2018 @ 11:01am

This road still exists for the most part...I've given many tours here for Friends of the Gorge groups. The masonry walls and the boulder guard rails, amazingly, still exist. Like Hadlow commented to Arthur, the Xmas flood of 1964 did wash out this particular curve, but I've still been able to do a then/now photo match-up. To see for yourself, either look at Google Earth...or drive a bit above Stonehenge and look for the defunct top of this road adjacent to a lone house. A quick east walk yields views of Lancaster's artistry...then the going gets tougher where the flood washed away the road....but good stuff is preserved below the wash out.

scott cook on 6th August 2018 @ 10:38am

Thanks Scott, Art and Hadlow for mention of the canyon road. I remember driving partway down it dodging large rocks to the site of a washout, probably in the early fifties.

Kenn on 7th August 2018 @ 7:30am