With the Grasshopper Fire shifting west and toward Mount Hood earlier this week, this historic image of Mirror Lake sometime in the 1920s came to mind. It’s a Benjamin Gifford photo, among the thousands that he and his son Ralph published over their combined careers as Oregon photographers (this is a colorized version of the original).
Notable in the image is the recently burned landscape around Mirror Lake and on much of Mount Hood’s south and west slopes in the early 1900s. The Kinzel and Sherar burns had already consumed most of the forests south and west of the mountain when the Mount Hood Loop Highway was completed in the early 1920s. The burned landscape provided lots of mountain views framed with blooming rhododendron and beargrass at popular along Laurel Hill and at Buzzard Point that have since disappeared under dense forests.
The Grasshopper Fire is expected to continue turning away from the mountain over the next few days, but this old image is a good reminder that the south side of Mount Hood will eventually burn, once again. Though tough to watch, it’s part of a natural cycle that was interrupted over the past century by human fire suppression, and is now returning in earnest.
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Image Description: This historic, newly-colorized photo was taken in the 1920s by renowned photographer Benjamin Gifford. The image features Mirror Lake with snow-covered Mount Hood rising in the distance. Two fishermen are working in the foreground, with smoke rising from their campfire. Their fishing gear sits nearby. Skeletons of trees burned in the Kinzel fire of the early 1900s frame the lake, a reminder of the long history of fire in this area.
Photo © WyEast Images (2026)
WyEast Images 