01Summary
Oregon's highest peak, a snowy volcano about 11,240 feet tall. Emigrants could see it from the Blue Mountains, some 150 miles away, but it blocked the last stretch to the Willamette Valley until 1846, when the Barlow Road opened around its south side.
02History
Mount Hood is the highest point in Oregon, about 11,240 feet tall, and it is a volcano. Eruptions have been building it for at least 500,000 years. The last big ones came in the 1780s, when a huge mudflow poured down the Sandy River, and vents near the top still give off sulfurous steam.
Twelve named glaciers and snowfields cover its upper slopes. For thousands of years Native people hunted, fished and picked huckleberries around the mountain. In a Klickitat story the mountain was once Wy'east, a man whom the Creator turned into a mountain for fighting with his brother over a woman.
Its English name dates from October 1792. Lt. William Broughton of George Vancouver's British expedition took two small boats up the Columbia River, saw the snowy peak and named it for Admiral Samuel Hood, who never saw it. Half a century later it became a landmark for emigrants. Crossing the Blue Mountains on September 15, 1845, Joel Palmer wrote that it was 'some one hundred and fifty miles distant, and being covered with snow, appeared as a white cloud rising above those surrounding it.'
The mountain was also the last great barrier. Until 1846 no wagon road crossed the Cascade Range, so for wagons the overland road ended at The Dalles. From there families floated their wagons down the Columbia on rafts or in hired boats, and some drove their cattle over the Lolo Pass trail, a narrow Native path around the mountain's northwest side that was too rough for wagons.
In the fall of 1845 Sam Barlow and Joel Palmer, with about 30 wagons between them, went looking for a way around the south side. On October 11, scouting ahead, Palmer saw the whole mountain for the first time. 'I had never before looked upon a sight so nobly grand,' he wrote.
With snow coming, the party left its wagons at a cabin they called Fort Deposit, just east of what is now Barlow Pass, and pushed on with pack animals. Barlow's own group did not reach Philip Foster's farm at Eagle Creek until December 23.
In 1846 Barlow opened the route as a toll road. Barlow Pass, about 4,160 feet up, was its highest point. West of it lay Laurel Hill, where wagons were let down the steepest slopes with ropes, chains and drag logs. Much of US Highway 26 now follows the old road.
03Today
Mount Hood National Forest covers about 1.1 million acres around the peak. From Barlow Pass a trail of about 1.2 miles follows the old road down to the Pioneer Woman's Grave, where road builders found an unknown emigrant woman's grave in 1924, and a short trail off US 26 leads to an old wagon chute on Laurel Hill. A replica tollgate stands at Rhododendron, and Timberline Lodge, built in 1936 and 1937, sits just below 6,000 feet on the south slope.
04People connected here
05Stops nearby
The Oregon Trail ran about 2,170 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City. The stops just before and after this one are below. You can also find Mount Hood on the interactive map.