Boom Town, ‘80s-Style

One of the West’s newest boom towns has been hit by something no one expected just a few years ago. The economic spurt is not from coal, oil, defense or the other usual Western extractive industries. Rather, Hood River, Ore. has been invaded by boardsailors to exploit the renewable resource of the wind. The peaceful little town of 4,500 people on the Columbia River 100 miles east of Portland has become the Aspen of windsailing because it happens to be right on the Columbia River Gorge, where wind, current and other conditions present a unique set of challenges.

A veteran Hood River sailor, Pat Dougherty, told Outside magazine: “Maui might have its primo weather and radical waves. But in the Gorge you get hammered with everything from icy water currents to nine-foot swells to logging barges. Conditions here are so challenging that people can learn in one week what it took me a whole summer to learn.”

And they are coming in droves to once-tranquil Hood River, to the distress of some Hood River old-timers and the delight of others. The University of Oregon has estimated that 6,680 visiting boardsailors stayed an average of 23 days at Hood River in 1987, contributing as much as $14 million to the local economy. Many, in fact, are settling permanently. Once-vacant stores have been transformed into sailboard shops. Old Victorians are being modernized. Locals are shocked at housing prices going over $100,000. “It’s just not our town anymore,” complained one resident to Outside writer Sam Moses. Farming and timber still are mainstays of the local economy, but boardsailing is having a major impact on the town.

Others are delighting in the economic spurt. This invasion is not by poor, drifting young people of the sort who clustered in certain cult towns in the 1960s and 1970s, living on whatever handouts they could find to supplement their granola. The sailors are relatively affluent and welcomed by many residents who describe them as wholesome, athletic and well-behaved young men and women. Hood River also is popular because of its proximity to Smith Rocks, currently the hottest rock-climbing area in the country.

Hood River is one of a number of communities, most of them in the West, that are spotlighted in the May issue of Outside as great sports towns. They include Boulder, Colo.; San Diego; Bend, Ore.; Moab, Utah (the Aspen of mountain biking), and Bishop, Calif. Bishop, in the Owens Valley on the east side of the Sierra, was cited for its climbing, hang-gliding, fishing, skiing and access to Death Valley.

Is this sort of recreational tourism the future of the West? Not everyplace in the West, certainly. But as people become blase about places like Aspen, Telluride and Santa Fe--or perhaps can no longer afford them--they will seek new destinations for fun-seeking and, oftentimes, resettlement. The trick for both newcomers and old residents alike is to have their area discovered without being overrun and spoiled.

Hood River seems to have maintained its allure so far. At the conclusion of his article, the Outside editors noted that Moses got hooked by Hood River while doing the research and shortly would be moving there.