150 Years 1887-1901 The Dalles THE DECADES OF HISTORY PART THREE OF THE DALLES CHRONICLE'S TEN-PART SERIES. April 27, 2007 Page 3 A RED LETTER DAY FOR THE DALLES DETAILS OF THE CELEBRATION - The Boats Came Through, and Crowds Were There to See. Thursday, Nov. 5th, 1896, will ever be a red-letter day in the history of The Dalles. The weather was simply perfect, the sky cloudless, the air bracing, with a suggestion of frostiness that coupled with the glad event sent the blood tinkling through artery and vein. By 9 o'clock the boat was crowded almost to the limit of her carrying capacity, and on the wharf and the beach was an enthusiastic crowd of 3,000 or more cheering citizens, many of whom later made the trip to the Locks by train. At 9:30, the last passenger was on board, and with waving hats and handkerchiefs, ringing cheers and tooting whistles, the good steamer REGULATOR pulled out from the wharf and turned her prow down stream, to, for the first time, meet and greet her consort of the lower river. Mt. Hood, covered with new fallen snow, seemed, as a passenger remarked, "to have put on a clean shirt and fixed up for the occasion." The stirring music furnished by our magnificent band echoed and re-echoed from the wooded hills that guard and guide Columbia's mighty tide. Down by Memaloose, with streaming banners, the engines drove the keen prow through the blue waters. A thing a life and energy, in strange contrast with the silent sand-strewn island of the dead; a vivid comparison with the times when those who now sleep silent and forgotten, were sole masters of the mighty stream. Landings were made at Lyle, when Mr. Whitcomb and others were taken on board, at Hood River, where Mayor L.N. Blowers, accompanied by the city council, Hon. E.L. Smith and others joined the crowd; at White Salmon, at Underwood's, where Amos Underwood, a pioneer settler of Skamania county, and one who was at the Locks at the time of the Indian massacre there, came, the especially invited guest of the D.P.&A.N.Co. At about 1 o'clock the REGULATOR reached the Locks, and her passenger soon swelled the crowd already arrived from Portland. To be continued. Incoming and Outgoing messages protected by Trend Micro PC-cillin program