MARVEL INN and JONSRUD PARK
Marvel Inn was the name my parents, Robert and Tillie Jonsrud, gave the restaurant they built on a wooded area on Bluff Road in 1928. The Inn extended out over the bluff, providing a magnificent view of Mt. Hood, the Cascades and the Sandy River valley.
It was located in Jonsrud Park, an area of several acres containing about 25 huge old-growth Douglas fir trees that reached about 200 feet in height. The park area, now covered with homes, extended from the south end of the present Viewpoint to the street, “Jonsrud Lane.”
The restaurant’s regular menu featured a five-course chicken dinner for $1.50, and a lunch with soup, choice of sandwich, apple-pie and coffee for $1.00. These high prices were acceptable in 1928 when the Inn opened, but when the Depression hit in 1929, the prices had to be lowered to $1.25 for the dinner and 75 cents for the lunch. This didn’t help much as financial conditions were so bad that almost immediately after the stock market crash in 1929, there were many bank failures and lost savings for the depositors.
Marvel Inn came to an untimely end in 1933 when it burned to the ground while the restaurant was being leased to another operator. Despite its brief existence, it was remembered fondly as the scene of several Sandy High School graduation banquets and as a popular dinner site for many people who had taken the Mt. Hood Loop trip and stopped on their way back to Portland.
Jonsrud Park was the scene of the annual Sandy Pioneer Picnics in the 1930s when it was common to have crowds of 300 or more where the community could socialize and picnic at no cost during the difficult financial times. Most of the picnics were held there from 1926 and through the 1930s. In 1949, Be Nelson donated the approximate two-acre Nelson Memorial Pioneer Park to the Sandy Historical Society. It was located about one mile west of downtown Sandy and was used from 1949 until 1998.
On the edge of the bluff, the east wind hits particularly hard so when several of the tall trees blew down over Bluff Road, my father decided in about 1950 to have the remainder cut down as the trees were a hazard to passing traffic. The late Alfred Gunderson and a partner did a professional job of felling the trees in a neat, parallel position so that none were shattered by one falling across another downed log. They used a hand-powered crosscut saw as it was just before the revolutionary chain-saws became popular.
It is particularly interesting to me that in the spring of 2010 during debate over Sandy’s traditional architecture, Marvel Inn was probably the only building ever in early
Sandy that was what would now be considered Cascadian style. It had a steep-pitched, gable roof with cedar shingles, exposed wooden beams, lots of native wood in porch posts and the balcony railing, rough-sawn vertical board-and-batten siding that was stained in a soft gray-sage color, and a rock fireplace.
Sandy Historical Society has a large collection of pictures taken at those early Pioneer Picnics. Information and photo sourced from Hometown Sandy Oregon by Phil Jonsrud, pp. 18-20.
