Tilly Jane & Cloud Cap: The Wild, Weird, 140-Year Story of Mt. Hood’s North Side

If you’ve ever snowshoed or skied up through the ghost forest toward Tilly Jane and looked up at the bulk of Mt. Hood, you can feel it immediately: this place has history.

The burned snags, the old stone chimneys, the log buildings half-buried in snow, the rough road that seems to disappear into the clouds — none of it happened by accident. For almost 140 years, the Cloud Cap–Tilly Jane area has been a testing ground for big ideas: luxury tourism, wagon roads, early mountaineering, New Deal architecture, and now backcountry skiing and snowshoeing.

This is the story of how it all came together.

Before the Road: Why the North Side Mattered

Long before there was a wagon road or an inn, the north side of Mt. Hood was already important.

Indigenous people used the high meadows seasonally, following game and using the open slopes for summer grazing long before anyone thought about building hotels on the mountain. Later, white settlers in the Hood River Valley pushed up toward the timberline with sheep and cattle, using many of the same meadows you pass today on the Tilly Jane trail.

By the 1870s and 1880s, mountaineering and “going to the mountains for your health” were becoming fashionable among wealthy Portlanders. The problem was access. The north side of Hood was wild, steep, and far from town. If you wanted to climb the mountain or even just get close to the glaciers, you had to earn every step.

That’s where the road — and later the inn — come in.

Blasting a Wagon Road Into the Mountain (1880s)

In 1884, a group called the Mount Hood Trail and Wagon Company cut a rough road from Hood River up the East Fork Hood River canyon toward the tree line on Mt. Hood’s northeast flank.PDX History

It wasn’t a highway. It was a hand-built wagon road carved into steep volcanic slopes with pickaxes and shovels. Later accounts describe Chinese laborers digging and filling the grade by hand, including a brutal 22% curve on a ravine just below the inn that became known as “China Fill.”Crag Rats

The road made something possible that hadn’t existed before: a way to get paying guests, luggage, and supplies close enough to the north side glaciers that you could realistically run a business up there.

Building Cloud Cap Inn: Luxury at 6,000 Feet (1889)

By 1889, two well-connected Portlanders — banker William M. Ladd and attorney/writer Charles Erskine Scott (C.E.S.) Wood — decided to push things further. They bought the road and its rights and hired architect William Whidden to design a mountain hotel.Travel Oregon Mount Hood History Don Pattison Scribe

Whidden wasn’t some random local builder; his firm, Whidden & Lewis, also designed the Portland Hotel and the famous Forestry Building at the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition. These were the people who knew how to impress wealthy guests.

What They Built

Cloud Cap Inn opened in August 1889. It sat at roughly 6,000 feet on the northeast slope of Mt. Hood — about the same elevation Timberline Lodge occupies on the south side today.Old Oregon Photos

Key features:

• A roughly 3,500-square-foot log structure with cedar shake roof

• Massive stone fireplace built from local rock

• Rough-hewn plank interiors and simple but sturdy rooms

• Ice-cold spring water piped 1,700 feet from a nearby spring up to the hotel

• Early adoption of telephone service by 1894, making it one of the more technologically advanced mountain lodges of its eraDon Pattison Scribe

Stagecoaches carried guests up the wagon road in all-day journeys, and for a time Cloud Cap was marketed as a luxury alpine getaway. The inn was named “Cloud Cap” by Wood’s wife, Nanny, for the cap of cloud that so often sits atop Hood’s summit.Oregon Encyclopedia

Stagecoaches, Climbers, and the First Automobiles

In its early decades, Cloud Cap Inn attracted wealthy travelers, writers, and climbers. You came here to escape city heat, breathe cold mountain air, and — if you were ambitious — attempt a north-side ascent of Mt. Hood.

Guests rode horse-drawn stages up the wagon road, often making the trip from Hood River in eight hours. As automobiles arrived, that began to change. By 1907, the first one-cylinder Cadillac reportedly made it to Cloud Cap. Soon after, a Pierce-Arrow was used as a “stage” to bring people up from Hood River in a fraction of the time.Crag Rats

But the road never stopped being difficult: steep, narrow, and exposed. Even today it’s gated for long stretches of the year.

Decline and Reinvention: From Inn to Rescue Base

Cloud Cap Inn managed to operate as a hotel well into the first half of the 20th century, but the economics were always tough. Winters were harsh, the road was expensive to maintain, and competing destinations (including Timberline Lodge on the south side) offered easier access.

The inn closed to paying guests in 1946.Travel Oregon

In the 1950s, ownership and use shifted. The building became the base of operations for the Crag Rats, one of the oldest mountain search-and-rescue organizations in the United States, founded by climbers from Hood River. Since then, Cloud Cap has functioned less as a hotel and more as:

• A rescue and mountaineering base

• A storage and workshop space for technical gear

• A clubhouse layered with more than a century of climbing memorabilia

OPB describes the modern interior as rough planks, gear tucked into every corner, and graffiti — names carved into the wood — dating back to the inn’s earliest climbing parties.opb

The building is now part of the Cloud Cap–Tilly Jane Recreation Area Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Travel Oregon

The New Deal Era: CCC Crews and the Birth of Tilly Jane (1930s)

If Cloud Cap Inn represents the Gilded Age phase of Mt. Hood tourism, the Tilly Jane area is pure New Deal.

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) arrived on Mt. Hood’s north side. Their job: build infrastructure for forest management, fire protection, and a growing wave of winter recreation.

Within what is now the Tilly Jane Historic District, CCC crews and Forest Service workers constructed a cluster of structures that still anchor the area today:Oregon Encyclopedia US Forest Service Friends of Tilly Jane Cabins

• Tilly Jane Guard Station (1934) – a log cabin used by the Forest Service for summer guard work and later as a winter base for backcountry access and fire patrols.

• Tilly Jane A-Frame (1939) – originally called the Ski Warming Hut, this large A-frame was built as a winter shelter and staging area for skiers and climbers.

• Amphitheater, campground, and ancillary structures – including stone retaining walls, a cook shed, and other small buildings that supported large group outings.Oregon Hikers

The architecture fits right into the broader 1930s Mt. Hood story. The A-Frame was completed in 1939, the same era that produced the Multorpor warming hut at Ski Bowl (1937), Silcox Hut (1939), and, of course, Timberline Lodge (1937).opb

American Legion Climbs, Ski Clubs, and Early Winter Use

From the late 1930s into the postwar years, Tilly Jane came alive as a winter base.

• The American Legion used the A-Frame as a mountain retreat and basecamp for organized climbs, especially on the Cooper Spur route.ONC

• The Hood River Ski Club and Crag Rats used the Guard Station and surrounding area for backcountry skiing, patrol work, and early avalanche response.Friends of Tilly Jane Cabins

• The Tilly Jane Ski Trail, brushed out in the winter of 1938–39, provided direct access from near today’s Cooper Spur Ski Area up to the cabins — climbing roughly 2,000 vertical feet in just 2.5 miles.Friends of Tilly Jane Cabins

This is the same steep path snowshoers and skiers use today. It’s always been a “earn your turns” route.

The Guard Station, originally a summer residence for Forest Service staff, evolved into a hybrid: part firefighting base, part winter access cabin, part search-and-rescue outpost.Travel Oregon+3US Forest Service+3Recreation.gov+3

Fire on the Mountain: The 2008 Gnarl Ridge Fire

In 2008, the Gnarl Ridge Fire swept through the north and northeast slopes of Mt. Hood. It burned thousands of acres of forest, including much of the Tilly Jane campground area and the slopes below Cloud Cap Road.Cascade Climbers The Bulletin

For a time, it looked like the historic structures might be lost. Reports describe:

• Campgrounds scorched

• Firefighters wrapping cabins and Cloud Cap Inn in protective foil

• Sprinklers set up at Tilly Jane to keep structures wet

In the end, the damage was mostly to the forest. Tilly Jane cabins and Cloud Cap Inn survived, but now stand in a stark “ghost forest” of silver snags and regrowing understory — the exact landscape many visitors associate with the area today.Bark Cascade Climbers WyEast Blog

The fire also triggered long-term restoration and hazard-tree work along Cloud Cap Road and in the historic district.

Who Runs Tilly Jane & Cloud Cap Today?

Today, the Cloud Cap–Tilly Jane Historic District is a partnership between the Forest Service and a patchwork of nonprofit groups and volunteers.

Cloud Cap Inn

• Used and maintained by the Crag Rats as their base for search and rescue, training, and mountaineering activities.

• Closed to the general public as a hotel since the 1950s, but still very much alive as a working mountain facility.opb Travel Oregon

Tilly Jane Guard Station

• Built in 1934 by the CCC.

• Recognized as one of the oldest remaining structures on Mt. Hood.US Forest Service

• Used first for fire protection and summer guard duty; later for winter backcountry access, search and rescue, and overnight stays.

• Today it’s rented out as a rustic cabin, operated in partnership with volunteer organizations like the Oregon Nordic Club.US Forest Service

Tilly Jane A-Frame

• Completed in 1939 by the CCC as the Ski Warming Hut.Friends of Tilly Jane Cabins

• Early years: basecamp for American Legion climbing parties and ski groups.ONC

• Modern years: a beloved, rough-around-the-edges hut used by backcountry skiers and snowshoers willing to make the steep 2,000-foot climb to spend the night. It sleeps around 20 people, often shared among multiple groups.

• Managed and restored by Friends of Tilly Jane Cabins and partners, with ongoing work to stabilize the structure, maintain composting toilets, and keep the historic character intact.

Together, these buildings — the inn, the guard station, the A-frame, and the associated campground and amphitheater — make up the Cloud Cap–Tilly Jane Historic District, a rare cluster of late-19th and 1930s mountain architecture in one place.US Forest Service Travel Oregon

What People Use This Area For Now

Today, the Cloud Cap–Tilly Jane zone has a very different vibe than the south side of Mt. Hood.

You don’t come here for chairlifts or groomed boulevards. You come here for:

• Backcountry skiing and snowboarding – especially up high toward Cooper Spur.

• Snowshoeing – the Tilly Jane Trail is one of the most rewarding (and steepest) snowshoe climbs near Portland.

• Overnight hut trips – skiing or snowshoeing up to the Guard Station or A-Frame for a night or a weekend.

• Summer hiking and climbing – using Cloud Cap Road as access to Cooper Spur, the Eliot Glacier area, and north-side routes.

• History nerding – people who love old mountain buildings, CCC projects, and early mountaineering culture.

It’s still a working landscape, too. Crag Rats stage rescues from Cloud Cap. Volunteers haul in materials for restoration projects. Forest Service crews manage post-fire forest recovery and road work.

Why We Chose This Area for Our Snowshoe Tour

There are a lot of places to snowshoe on Mt. Hood. Most of them are fine. A few of them are spectacular.

The Tilly Jane / Cloud Cap area is both spectacular and meaningful.

When you snowshoe here, you’re not just walking through snow:

• You’re following in the tracks of early climbers who used this trail before there were ski lifts.

• You’re passing cabins that were hand-built during the New Deal to make the backcountry more accessible.

• You’re moving through a burn scar that tells a very recent story about fire, climate, and how close we came to losing some of the most historic structures on the mountain.

Our Mt. Hood Snowshoe Adventure with Hot Lunch & Transportation is built around that experience: big views, deep snow, and a real sense of place not just a generic winter walk in the woods.

If you want to see this history with your own eyes instead of reading about it on a screen, come out with us.

👉 Book the tour here:
https://waterfallshuttle.com/mt-hood-snowshoe-adventure-with-hot-lunch-transportation/

We’ll handle the driving, the logistics, and the hot lunch.
You just show up ready to snowshoe through one of the most interesting corners of Mt. Hood.