There’s a house off of Markham Road that my family has driven past a hundred times and always marveled at, but we didn’t understand the significance of it’s history until it came on the market in March of 2026.
The house is one of the original homesteads of the Hood River area established in 1871 by Frank Conrad Sherrieb.
It sits on 2.2 acres on the west side of Hood River, set back from the road behind mature trees, the Indian Creek runs right through the property. From the right angle you can see both Mount Adams and Mount Hood through the branches.
The property at 1580 Markham Road is now listed at $799,000 — and if you’re looking for a turnkey home, this isn’t it. But if you know anything about what you’re looking at, it might be one of the most interesting properties to come to market in the Gorge in years.
The Man Who Started The Homestead
Sherrieb was born in Württemberg, Germany in 1845. He made his way to America, worked construction along the Union Pacific line from Wyoming west, and landed in Portland in 1871. Three months later he came to Hood River — then barely a settlement and homesteaded the land where this house still stands.
He filed his final homestead affidavit in December of 1876, claiming the land as his own. He would live on it for the rest of his life.
By the time Hood River incorporated as a city, Sherrieb had been there longer than almost anyone. A local history compiled in 1919 noted that he held the longest continuous residence in Hood River of any living person — 48 years.1 He had cleared the land of rock by hand, helped organize the first irrigation company in the Hood River Valley (The Water Supply Company), served as a charter member of the first church in the valley at Belmont, and raised six children with his wife Isabelle, a Wisconsin native from the Boorman family of Hood River.
Fred Sherrieb died in March of 1925 at the age of 79, and was buried in Hood River. His wife Isabelle outlived him by decades, eventually remarrying and moving to Multnomah County before her death in 1953. Their daughter Mildred, born in 1905, married a man named George Lucas and lived until 1993 — long enough to see the valley her father homesteaded become the destination it is today.
What’s Still Standing
The Victorian farmhouse that sits on the property today is a 3,097 square foot, six-bedroom, three-bathroom home with tall ceilings, oversized windows, and a third floor with its own caretaker’s quarters — a kitchenette, a bathroom, and great views of Mount Adams.
It does not have modern electrical. It needs significant work — cosmetic and systems both. The listing is honest about this: it calls the home “less of a turnkey property and more of an opportunity.”
But the bones are there. The structure is reportedly solid and straight. The original details — trim, proportions, the scale of the rooms — reflect a kind of craftsmanship that simply isn’t built anymore. Large closets were unusual for homes of this era, which suggests whoever designed it was thinking carefully.
For the right person, the reward of restoring it could be exceptional.
Why It Matters
Properties like this one don’t come up often, and when they do they rarely come with this much documented history. Most of what we know about Hood River’s founding generation exists in fragments — county records, old diaries, church registries, the occasional family photograph. The Sherrieb homestead is one of the few places where that history is still physically present.
Whatever happens with the property next, I hope the next owner preserves some of the history that’s fundamental to Hood River.
1580 Markham Road, Hood River is listed at $799,000 through Windermere Real Estate Columbia River Gorge. MLS# 381769875.