Deputies blocked the road leading into the Cascade Locks Marine Park on Thursday morning as the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office and a team of salvage divers prepared to retrieve possible evidence in a long ago – but not forgotten – mystery .

In December 1958, Portlanders Ken and Barbara Martin and their three young daughters headed east in the family’s cream-colored Ford station wagon to find a Christmas tree. They never returned.

An intensive search of the region followed, turning up nothing. The story became a national fascination, with sightings of the Martins coming in from around the country. Most of these sighting would be proved unreliable or flat-out false.

A year later, two of the girls were found in the Columbia River, dead from drowning, near Bonneville Dam. The rest of the family — and the car — remained missing.

Until, perhaps, now.

Archer Mayo, a professional auctioneer and a dedicated, highly skilled diver, became interested in the family’s fate and how everyone believed the case was unsolvable.

“You know, when somebody says nobody can do it, I think I want to do it,” he said as he and the salvage dive team waited at the locks for a crane barge to arrive.

Based on where the two girls were found in 1959 and using computer predictive modeling, he started “searching in the former navigation locks,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

That was in 2018.

Some seven years later — a couple months ago — he located a car “about 50 feet under the surface of the water [and] 7 feet under the ground.”

He got authorities involved, and digging soon commenced using a suction dredge. A car began to emerge from the sludge that “99.9% is the Martin car,” Mayo said, adding that it appears remarkably well preserved given its age.

The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office also believes it’s likely the long-missing Ford station wagon.

“More than circumstantial evidence points us to believe it’s the Martin car,” Sheriff Matt English told reporters Thursday at Cascade Locks.

It’s not yet known whether the car contains the remains of the three still-missing Martin family members.

Mayo said this isn’t the best time of the year to be diving in this part of the river, with visibility quite limited, but he added that he has “hundreds of dives in this location and so I know my way around almost by feel.”

He said he made “kind of a rope course” for the salvage divers who will be going down to the car today.

The deputies and divers will be working carefully while bringing up the car to ensure everyone’s safety and to preserve any potential evidence, English said.

He said officials have been in touch with surviving members of the Martin family and will be “keeping them in the loop.”

“Obviously, there has been a lot of speculation” over the years – including of foul play, the sheriff added.

There have been magazine articles and books and documentaries over the years putting forth various theories about the Martins’ disappearance.

For his part, Mayo’s theory is quotidian: Ken Martin misjudged space and distance while driving in the Cascade Locks parking lot, and the car toppled into the water.

But for now, what happened to the Martins remains speculation. English said law enforcement is treating this like any other investigation.

“Even though this is 66 years ago, this is a tragedy,” he said. “We need to determine to the best of our ability what happened to this family.”

— Tatum Todd is a breaking news reporter who covers public safety, crime and community news. Reach them at [email protected] or 503-221-4313.

Tatum Todd