Timberline Lodge, built between 1936 and 1938, was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project. The architects and administrators decided that the lodge would be furnished with hand-forged wrought iron, handmade wood furniture, hand-woven fabrics, and hand-hooked rugs using three major design elements: pioneer heritage, Indian motifs, and native plants and wildlife. The WPA hired three individuals who had a significant role in the project’s implementation. These were O.B. Dawson, a master blacksmith who oversaw the forging of ironworks in a WPA metalwork shop in Portland, Ray Neufer, who supervised a WPA woodshop in Portland, and Margery Hoffman Smith, a local interior designer who coordinated the interior furnishing of the lodge. Women working under the Women’s and Professional Division of the WPA wove upholstery and drapery materials, hooked rugs, and sewed fabrics using designs by Mrs. Smith.
Workers for the project mainly came from the WPA, but some jobs, including excavation, road building, and laying the terraces, were performed by the younger men in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). William I. Turner, A.I.A. acted as the supervising architect. Linn A. Forrest, A.I.A., Howard L. Gifford, and Dean R.E. Wright, A.I.A. served as associate architects, and Ward W. Gano was the resident engineer.
The carver’s name for a piece of wood carving art inside the Timberline Lodge is not known. The piece of art can be attributed to either of the original WPA woodworkers who built the lodge. However, the first of two 3-letter red-painted words at the bottom of the art is indecipherable. The second word is believed to be “Joe.”
The Timberline Lodge is on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972 and is also a National Historic Landmark since 1977.