As mountains go, Mount Norway is more of a molehill.

Rising sharply from the north city limits of Washougal, the hill climbs to a mere 1,100 feet elevation, scant competition for majestic Mount Hood looming to the south or even 4,390-foot Silver Star, the nearest neighbor to the north.

In the old days, Mount Norway was famous for its potatoes, grown in broad fields wrestled from the forest and shipped by wagon and river boat to the Portland market.

In more recent years, Mount Norway gained another kind of fame, as the grudging host to the Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair. During this brief festival in September 1970, an estimated 20,000 turned-on hippie types frolicked across field and forest in various stages of undress, while the conservative residents of Mount Norway and law enforcement agents stood on the sidelines and gnashed their teeth.

Sky River and its free spirits have departed. Where rock bands played and marijuana smoke drifted among the tall firs, a sprawling subdivision sprouted big and expensive homes, the symbols of the establishment that was the antithesis of Sky River.

Mount Norway gained its name from Norwegian immigrants who took up homesteads in the 1879s and began battling the thick forest that covered the slopes. Some of these pioneer names were Jorgenson, Erickson, Olson, Aune, Peterson and Hesselberg.

The area originally was called Fir Grove, but quickly gained the name Mount Norway as the Scandinavians took over.

There were three Mount Norway schools over the years, including the latest two-room school that still stands near the intersection of Southeast 20th Street and Southeast 357th Avenue. However, it has not been used as a school for about a half-century. The school districts of Mount Norway and Washougal were consolidated by a vote on April 29, 1925.

The earliest school on Mount Norway was on the Peter Dunne homestead close to the Bear Prairie Road. It was built about 1882. The last school was built in 1910.

Chester Nagel was a long-time Mount Norway resident, moving there about 1927. He recalled that the school was the center of social activity for the community, with a square dance held every Saturday night.

Nagel also remembered the weather on Mount Norway, an elevated area swept by savage winds that whistle down the Columbia River Gorge. "One winter we were snowed in for three weeks."

Farming, primarily dairy, potatoes and prunes, provided the livelihood for Mount Norway's residents until modern-day economics made small farms no longer profitable. The farm fields are still there, but now they are growing crops of houses. The only thing unchanged is the spectacular view of Mount Hood, whose lofty head looms far above the subdivisions.