ABOUT THE
BUILDING...
AND US
The Old Wheeler Hotel was built in 1920 to
replace two wooden buildings that had occupied the same location. The
original buildings -- The Rector Hotel and the Hotel Annex -- were flourishing
along with the rest of Wheeler which was in an economic boom. The Pacific
Railway & Navigation Company had completed a rail link between Portland and
Wheeler in 1911. The railroad facilitated the transport of timber from the
vast old-growth Tillamook Forest through which it ran, to the lumber and shingle
mills of Wheeler. Wood products from the mills could then be transported to
Portland and points east.
The Rector in 1914
Things took a turn for the worse in the early 1930's. Not only
was the Great Depression taking its toll, but in the
summer of 1933 the first of a series of major forest fires broke out which utterly
devastated the timber industry in the area. The
conflagration, known as "The Tillamook Burn" changed the environment,
the economy, and the people of northwest Oregon forever.
Patronage of the Wheeler Hotel declined until, in 1940, Dr.
Harvey Rinehart purchased the building and began operating it as the Rinehart
Clinic which became well known as a facility for the treatment of
arthritis. Patients would come and stay in hotel rooms on the upper floor
of the building while receiving treatments on the first floor and
basement. The clinic eventually offered all forms of medical services
until it closed its doors around 1980. Dr, Harry Rinehart, Harvey's
grandson, practices family medicine to this day in a modern facility -- called
The Rinehart Clinic -- just up the road here in Wheeler.
Dr. Harvey Rinehart and the staff of the Rinehart Clinic
After the clinic re-located, the only tenant of the building for several
years was a large fabric store called "Ocean Fabrics" occupying most
of the first floor. An employee at Ocean Fabrics named Doris Bash bought
the business and turned it into "Creative Fabrics" a unique fabric and
quilt-making store that she still owns and operates on the first floor of the Old Wheeler
Hotel.
The building changed ownership a couple of times in the '80s and
'90s. Some improvements were made
including new store-fronts and updated wiring, but essential maintenance had not
been performed and by the late 1990's the building was showing serious signs of
deterioration.
It was in the fall of 1998 that my wife, Maranne Doyle-Laszlo and myself
(Winston Laszlo) stopped in Wheeler for a cup of coffee. We had been
traveling full-time in our motor-home for two and a half years with our son,
Branson, who was three years old at the time. The coffee shop was in the
Old Wheeler Hotel Building -- which was for sale...
Here is an article from the local newspaper written shortly after we
acquired the building on New Year's Day 1999, that describes a little about our
story:
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