Car being pulled from Columbia River might have belonged to Oregon
family that vanished in 1958
[March 07, 2025]
By MARTHA BELLISLE
Authorities will try again Friday to pull a station wagon from the
Columbia River that's believed to have belonged to an Oregon family of
five who disappeared nearly 70 years ago while they were out searching
for Christmas greenery.
The search for the Martin family was a national news story at the time
and led some to speculate about the possibility of foul play, with a
$1,000 reward offered for information about their whereabouts.
Salvage efforts were called off just before dark on Thursday and
authorities said they could not provide a timetable for the removal of
the car.
The station wagon thought to belong to Ken and Barbara Martin was found
last fall by Archer Mayo, a diver who had been looking for it for seven
years, said Mayo’s representative, Ian Costello. Mayo pinpointed the
likely location and dove several times before finding the car
upside-down about 50 feet (15 meters) deep, covered in mud, salmon guts,
silt and mussel shells, said Costello, who announced the find Wednesday.
“This is a very big development in a case that’s been on the back of
Portland’s mind for 66 years,” Costello told The Associated Press.
Mayo found other cars nearby, which will need to come out before the
station wagon can be pulled from the river, Costello said. Pete Hughes,
a Hood River County sheriff’s deputy, said one car had been previously
identified and the second was an unknown Volkswagen.
“We don't know what we will find,” Hughes said when asked if officials
thought bodies were inside the cars.
The Martins took their daughters Barbara, 14, Virginia, 13, and Sue, 11,
on a ride to the mountains on Dec. 7, 1958, to collect Christmas
greenery, according to AP stories from the time. They never returned.
Officials narrowed their search for the family after learning that Ken
Martin had used a credit card to buy gas at a station near Cascade
Locks, a small Columbia River community about 40 miles (64 kilometers)
east of Portland.
“Police have speculated that Martin's red and white station wagon might
have plunged into an isolated canyon or river,” the AP reported. “The
credit card purchase was the only thing to pin-point the family's
movements.”
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The Christmas photo of the Ken Martin family, from left, Barbara, 7;
Ken, Barbara, Sue, 4; Donald, 21; and Virginia, 6; in Portland,
Ore., in December 1952. (Ken Martin family via AP, File)
Five months after their disappearance, the body of the youngest
daughter was found “bobbing in a Columbia River slough,” according
to the AP. “The body of Susan apparently floated free of the
wreckage in the spring current and was washed to a back water slough
near Camas, Washington," the AP wrote.
Virginia Martin's body was found the next day about 25 miles (40
kilometers) upstream from where her sister's was located. The other
family members were never found, but the search continued.
The Martins had a 28-year-old son, Don, who was a Marine veteran and
graduate student at Columbia University in New York at the time and
told the AP he believed his family was dead.
“It's been a high public interest case,” Hughes told the AP on
Thursday. After Mayo provided part of the license plate number and
other vehicle identifiers, the sheriff's office and the Columbia
Gorge major crimes team, along with the Oregon State Crime Lab,
arranged to have the car pulled out, he said.
“We're not 100% sure it's the car,” Hughes said. “It's mostly
encased in mud and debris, so we don't know what to expect when we
pull it out of the water today.”
Mayo runs a business that finds things that were lost in the river,
like watches and rings, but also helps with the recovery of drowning
victims, Costello said. He had been looking for a research vessel
that sank in 2017 when he learned about the Martin family, Costello
said.
Mayo began digging up material on the family and used modeling to
pinpoint the possible location, he said.
There is a road near where the cars were found underwater.
Authorities haven't said whether they think they might find the
remains of other missing people in any of the other vehicles being
pulled from the river.
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