Mitchell Point Tunnel
What's In There?
Driving home from Hood River the other day I spotted a curious thing. Driving around a bend at 70 mph I briefly clocked some strange holes in the rock face, like something an insect would build but clearly made for humans. I-84 is lined by bits of the Historic Colombia River Highway, the first major paved highway in the Pacific Northwest and the first scenic highway constructed in the United States. It was destroyed in parts by the construction of I-84. Initial googling informed me that what I saw was Mitchell Point Tunnel. Why’s it called Mitchell Point? It appears there are plans to rebuild it, but why? I want to go in there but in the way it is now, not a new modern version. I want to pretend I am a forefather.
The original tunnel was built in 1915 and included five arched windows.
The tunnel was closed in 1953 for safety due to overcrowding and the introduction of larger cars, and then was ultimately destroyed in 1966 to widen I-84.
As it turns out what I was seeing was not, in fact, the original tunnel but the one that has already been reconstructed and actually opened to the public just last month. I love it when tax dollars do things like this.
I was disheartened to learn that the original tunnel needed to be destroyed and was naively incredulous that they couldn’t have avoided demolition just for one silly highway.
I tried to figure out what happened to the mountain in order to make space for the new highway. Above you can see a photo of Mitchell Point circa 1920, then at some point post I-84 but pre Mitchell Point Tunnel 2.0 and then after the new tunnel’s construction.
You can see here how thin the land was between the mountain and river, enough for the train tracks (which exist today) but certainly not for the 4 lane highway I know now. What an ambitious engineering feat it was, not only to loop the historic highway up into the mountain but then to just shave it all back to make space for the new highway. We can do hard things.
The name Mitchell Point seems to have a few different theories as to the man it was named for. The Native American name for this mountain is Storm King and so I’m just going to think of it as that.
The new tunnel has a spookier, waiting-in-line-for-The-Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-ride, vibe than the original tunnel which seemed whimsical in its smaller dimension. In any case I’m glad that it’s there and I’m looking forward to a visit soon.
Sources:
Kloster, Tom. Exploring Mitchell Point. WyEast Blog, May 5, 2012, https://wyeastblog.org