Sunday, June 29, 1997

Hawthorne was born back East in 1865, but wanderlust soon set in.

At age 11, he drove an ox team into the Black Hills country, then worked the railroads from the prairies to the Pacific. He tried his hand at mining in Wyoming, pushed on to San Francisco and took a boat to Astoria, where he got a job in the canneries. At age 32, he deduced he didn't "seem to be ready for steady jobs" and headed toward the gold fields.

At age 40, he settled down on a farm in Oregon's Hood River Valley.