Downtown Historical Walking Tour

Richard Gerdes, of Eagle Creek, has the distinction of opening the first store and establishing the “Sandy” Post Office in 1873, which gave this tiny town its name. The photo above is enlarged from the photo on page one. You can barely see the Barlow Road trailing off to the right. After a number of years the Gerdes business was sold to Friedrich Meinig. In the 1880s Meinig built a large building a few blocks east to accommodate a larger general merchandise store and included a dance hall and saloon.

In 1911 A.L. and M.A. Deaton opened Clackamas County Bank in a portion of H.S. Eddy’s real estate office. In 1912 W.A. Proctor was taken in as a stockholder. In just a few years the tiny bank was able to construct its own building. In 1918 Proctor bought controlling interest in the bank. CCB survived the Great Depression and is going strong today. It’s still run by the Proctor family and is the oldest community bank in Oregon. The CCB corporate offices are now located on Proctor Boulevard and have been since the 1950s.

Now you’ll want to pay close attention as it gets a little confusing: The building in this photo was the Sandy Hotel (the previous site) which was built by the Revenues in 1874, purchased by Percy and Blanche Shelley in the early 1900s and moved to this Proctor Blvd. location to be the Shelley family home. In 1936 Alice Scales purchased the home and turned it into the Dew Drop Inn, which was wildly successful. The restaurant/lounge had a successful 30 year run. Alice Scales lived to be 93 years old. There are stories about the Dew Drop Inn still being shared by the locals to this day.

This Lutheran church, built in 1902 on land donated by Caspar Junker, was the second church built in Sandy. The first church, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, was built in 1894. The

Lutheran congregation also built a parsonage in between the church and the Lutheran school. This church provided a place of worship in an otherwise tough town. In 1959 the Lutheran congregation built a new church and this one became the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. This building is one of Sandy’s most recognizable landmarks and is still in use today, but for non-sectarian purposes. Photo taken 2008.

This house was the home of the Junker family for many years. It remains virtually unchanged and is occupied by the Sandy Country Florist today. Casper Junker came to Sandy in 1888 for a short time, went to Portland to train in the hotel business and came back to Sandy with a wife in 1897. At that time he bought the Sandy Hotel from Von Scholley’s widow. Casper was very involved in Sandy’s history as a hotel owner, saloon owner, restaurateur, land developer and he constructed commercial and rental buildings as well.

In 1910 R.S. “Bob” Smith started in small building at this location as a blacksmith with his brother, Melvin. They mostly did horseshoeing and repair of wagons and buggies. Next door was the Sandy Hotel’s barn and livery stable, and then the Mt. Hood Saloon and the Star Saloon and Sandy Café. They were all lost in the 1913 fire. They mostly did horseshoeing and repair of wagons and buggies. In 1915 R.S. bought out his brother and the property next door and built a garage to sell and repair automobiles. He also sold Standard gasoline.