Authorities are believed to have been part of five Oregon families who tried again Friday to pull a station wagon from the Columbia River and disappeared nearly 70 years ago while searching for Christmas greenery.
The Martin Family search was a national news article at the time, with some speculating about the possibility of a foul play.
Salvage efforts were cancelled on Thursday just before darkness, with authorities saying they could not provide a schedule for the removal of the vehicle.
The station wagon, which was thought to belong to Ken and Barbara Martin, was discovered last fall by diver Archer Mayo, who had been looking for for seven years, said Mayo's president Ian Costello.
Mayo has identified possible locations, identified the pigeons several times, and then turned the car upside down about 50 feet deep, covered in mud, salmon guts, silt and mussel shells, Costello, who announced the discovery on Wednesday.
“This is a huge development if it's been behind Portland's heart for 66 years,” Costello told The Associated Press.
Mayo found another car nearby. This must come out before pulling the station wagon out of the river, Costello said.
Hood River County Sheriff's Deputy Pete Hughes said one vehicle had been previously identified and the second was an unknown Volkswagen.
“We don't know what we're going to find,” Hughes said when asked if officials thought it was inside the car.
AP
Martins took her daughters Barbara (14), 13, 13, Sue and Sue on a ride into the mountains on December 7, 1958, to collect Christmas greens, according to the Associated Press at the time.
They never returned.
Authorities narrowed down the search for the family after learning that Ken Martin used his credit card to purchase gas at a station near Cascade Rock, a small Columbia River community about 40 miles east of Portland.
“Police speculate that the wagon at Martin's red and white stations may have jumped into isolated canyons or rivers,” the Associated Press reported. “Cashing a credit card was the only thing that pinpointed family movements.”
According to the Associated Press, five months after their loss of failure, the body of the youngest daughter was found to be “shaking in the slough on the Columbia River.” “Susan's body clearly floated freely from the wreckage of spring currents and was washed in a back steaming area near Camas, Washington,” the AP wrote.
Virginia Martin's body was found about 25 miles upstream from her sister's location the following day.
No other family members were found, but the search continued.
Martins had a 28-year-old son, Don. He was then a veteran and graduate student of the Marine Corps at Columbia University in New York.
“It was a high public interest incident,” Hughes told the Associated Press on Thursday. After Mayo provided some license plate numbers and other vehicle identifiers, the Sheriff's Office and the Columbia Valley main crime team, along with the Oregon Crime Institute, arranged for the vehicle to be pulled out, he said.
“We're not 100% sure it's a car,” Hughes said. “Most of it's wrapped in mud and debris, so I don't know what to expect when I pull it out of the water today.”
Mayo finds lost in the river, like clocks and rings, but runs a business that also helps recover the victims of his own death, Costello said.
He was looking for a research vessel that sank when he learned about the Martins in 2017, Costello said.
Mayo began digging up family material and began using modeling to identify possible locations, he said.
There is a road near where the car was found underwater.
Authorities did not say whether they thought the bodies of other missing people might be found in one of the other vehicles pulled from the river.
