Interstate Cafe in Rainier

Here is the quintessential 1950s dinner. The Interstate Cafe was located in Rainier, Oregon. This picture was taken about 1950. Ferdinand Welke and his wife Mary Dargatz (both immigrants) lived and worked in Rainer for a number of years. They owned this restaurant at the time. Mary is standing behind the counter with two of her workers. Mary is in the center.

I don’t know much about the Interstate Cafe or its history. Maybe a trip to Rainier would be in order.

Ferdinand Welke was an immigrant from the Poland/Belarusian border. He and a few of his siblings escaped the Russo-Polish War of 1920, a time when eastern Europe was embroiled in chaos as Bolshevik Communist regime was seizing power.

Mary was also an immigrant. Her parents, Herman Dargatz and Amelia Klukas, had immigrated to Alberta Canada from Pomerania in the early 1890s to scratch out a new life for themselves and their family. Wanting to visit family in America, Mary and her sister Elizabeth immigrated to Portland Oregon. There she met her future husband, Ferdinand. They were married in the summer of 1924 in Portland.

Thank you for reading.

Jenny Findsen