Our Story

is a family owned and operated business in Rhododendron, Oregon, in the shadow of the majestic Mt Hood. 

The founders, Rick & Jiyeon Applegate, started Mt Hood Roasters in 2002 when Rick retired from the Army after 21 years of military service.  The Applegate name in Oregon dates back to the 1840’s when the Applegate’s brought families and livestock to the Oregon Territory, built the famed Applegate Trail (Oregon’s southern route) to the Oregon Territory, farmed, surveyed, built businesses and helped establish the regions earliest forms of government.  The pioneer Jesse Applegate is known as one of Oregon’s earliest statesmen.  While Rick is not a direct decedent of the three Applegate families that first came to Oregon, he is a blood relative (cousin) and spent his life celebrating the Applegate family’s adventuring, wanderlust lives marked by their arrival in the US in the 1600’s, helping settle the Kentucky/Missouri area along with the famed Daniel Boone family in the late 1700’s, and then pioneered their way to the Oregon Territory in 1843. Rick’s Great-Aunt & Uncle, Delia Applegate-Anderson and Andy Anderson were also credited with naming the nation’s oldest search and rescue organization, The Crag Rat’s, that hail from Hood River where their home they built in the 1920’s is on the National Historic Register.