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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , MAY/JUNE 2001
More than a century of rapacious logging and heedless
overfishing, as well as electrifying the river with dynamo dams
built upriver and on dozens of tributaries — and the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation (and later the Trojan nuclear power plant
near Portland) — killed the big salmon runs that had made
Astona the worlds fish cannery capitol, the railroads went to
Portland or from Longview to Seattle, which killed Astoria as a
major seaport; and two huge fires, comparable in their effect to
those that swept through Rome, London, Chicago and San
Francisco, the worst in 1922, burned out its heart
Most of the timber industry is gone and fishing along
the lower river has dwindled almost to vanishing. (The ocean out
front has been raked clean.) The canneries that bought the fish
are closed and only a few deteriorating husks are left. The yards
that built the boats are gone. The waterfront that used to be so
busy is virtually abandoned. For many years it seemed the river
banks were fenced by fish boats left to fall apart by bankrupt
fishermen, something like Rotten Row on Young's Bay where
captains beached their womout schooners, and later the hulks
of steamboats such as the once famous T. J Potter
Schemes to capture industry to revive the city's
economy with aluminum plants, coal docks and shipwrecking
yards die in labor, or before they come to labor. Richard Nixon
claimed that the lower Columbia River was destined to be the
"light metals capitol of the world" and compared its potential
to the heavy metals industries of Germany's Ruhr Valley. An oil
module builder that named itself Astoria Oil Services marched
in as an economic savior in the mid-1980s but crept away like
a Bedouin when it failed to meet its contracts.
Great plans have been drawn up to transfigure the
riverfront that are almost Athenian but are plagued with cost
overruns, lack of outside interest and community protest. The
city has designated its downtown core as an historical district,
centerpiece of its "Museum Without Walls," although most
buildings are relatively young, reconstructed from the ruins of
the Astoria Fire similar to a forest reseeding on a bum. The
hills remain quilted with old wood Victorian houses which were
belatedly discovered as a treasure more valuable than condos
and malls they were almost displaced by. Having profited
and decayed from the ruination of its resources (and reckless
disregard for future generations), Astoria puts its money on
tourism, thrusting forward as its lure for tourists its colorful but
failed history, its boisterous and turbulent reality commercially
saccharined into banal nostalgia to entice easy-spending
tourists.
Now the sultans of fun replace loggers and fisherpeople.
They build shopping centers and malls, condominiums, bigger
and glitzier motels, restaurants and bars that displace the
remaining trees and block ocean and river views Cannon Beach
to the south, which in an earlier era resisted opportunities to be
a second Carmel, has acquiesced and booms like a goldstrike
town Seaside mixed its sand with water and remade its graceful
downtown into a cement mall. Astoria hustles its history and
carpenter gothic houses to draw tourists from the beach towns,
which are obviously tough competition.
The transformation of Astoria from a resource extraction
economy has caused harm to many of its residents who have
not recovered or successfully profited from the present reliance
on tourism as a replacement. Tourism generally profits only a
feVv, the rest are paid minimum wages, usually work seasonally,
receive little or no benefits and are seldom protected from
employer abuse.
The legacies of lifetimes spent in the woods or on the
decks of fishboats are over and experienced loggers and fisher
folk and their children who expected to spend their lives the
same way are forced to find other work; menial and low-wage
jobs are usually all that are available — or they leave
The younger generations flow out of Astoria and often
out of Oregon. They move away right after high school or follow
ing a year or two at Clatsop Community College ('Harvard on
the Hili'), which might move its campus, once the city's high
F ort C latsop 1805-06
winter quarters of
school, to the Astoria downtown Some of the city's young leave
for college elsevtfiere; most go to look for wsrk in Portland and
Seattle, or south to California
A pervasive underclass is developing in Astoria, and the
cycle of poverty perpetuating it puts burdensome pressures on
city services, on housing which is inadequate to meet escalating
need, and on families, leading to rising domestic abuse, heavy
drug and alcohol use and crime.
The attrition of the past decades has created serious
problems for a civic renaissance. Astoria has little industry and
limited appeal to men and women of skill or business — not only
in attracting them but keeping those who are here.
Tourism is only a temporary solution to Astoria's long
economic decline. A more solid intellectual base must be set in
place through local schools to develop an industry Astoria could
be good at. In the meantime development of recreation facilities
should not result in loss of habitat for residents.
Prosperity has several definitions but its usual meaning
is material wealth. A city is prosperous if its industries and
businesses are perking, most of its citizens are employed and
living in solid houses in good health with good schools, libraries
and entertainment, and are putting money in the city treasury
rather than sucking it dry which happens in hard times. Astona
possesses the skills that built industrial America but the nation
is painfully converting from production to services, sending most
industrial jobs overseas. The USA's purpose is to administrate
the growing world economy and import its basic needs from
developing (and economically colonized) countries. Astona is
part of a larger culture that is ebbing into a less vigorous middle
age. What it has been is not only lost, it is unnecessary
City leaders claim to be soberly facing the future. They
say that Astoria will not prosper by fantastic schemes as it has
banked on in the past. The city's decline will only be reversed by
ASTORIA'S COLUMN
Astoria seems to be a client city in the manner that
Oregon is a colony of large out of state corporations Business
czars in Portland who refute Astoria's objections to dredging a
deeper shipping channel in the Columbia River yet attempt to
impose their own undesired designs on the locally cherished
Astoria Column atop Coxcomb Hill
The Astoria Column is 75 years old, constructed in
1926 to mark the end of the Oregon Trail and establishment
of Astoria as the first American city in the West. It has been
nearly six years since its incredible scroll of history that for
many years resembled a mudpole was given a facelift that
has made it gleam like a new tattoo
The 'Friends of the Astoria Column', a bifurcated group
that includes a few eminent Astorians as well as Portland elite,
was formed as a group to raise the necessary money to restore
the Column to its former grandeur.
But the 'Friends' had more on their agenda than just
refurbish the Column Their grand scheme is to redesign every
thing around it. The next stage in this 'restoration' plan is to
landscape around the Column and build an interpretive center
for the thousands of visitors from all over the world (and a large
parking lot in the meadow below the Column)
A part of the plan is to incorporate already paid for
personally inscribed bricks in the landscaping and place more
expensively purchased 'vanity' steps up the inside of the
Column
People from all over the USA and the world visit the
Column. The great majority are delighted and awed at the
expansive beauty of ocean, rivers, valleys and mountains
From wherever they visit they acclaim the view as among
the most beautiful anywhere A 5 year old Astoria girl once
exclaimed, "You can see the vtfiole world from up here!"
Visitors and locals have voiced comments and opinions
of the plans to redesign the Column's environment A few are
pertinent to the current controversy as they reflect sentiments
of people the project is presumed to attract and benefit;
~The new interpretive center should be a solid simple
Northwest-type of design (perhaps built with the bricks) that
does not compete with the Column's grandeur
(A grandiose Parthenon design for the interpretative
center has been scaled down due to public criticism and its
site has been changed from the westside prow of the hill to the
southeast comer already utilized for the caretaker’s house as
well as garage and public bathrooms)
-The info/trinket shack should be incorporated into the
interpretative center (which is planned) to give Column visitors
a virtually unobstructed view from north, west and south (the
east is forested); a horseshoe-shaped walk along the crest of
the hill that shows the rugged topography and complex drain
age of the lower Columbia basin
-Existing park lawn around the Column should remain
instead of being bricked over, though that might not be possible
because of the amount of bricks that have been sold. The idea
of an inner courtyard around the Column constructed of bricks
might be acceptable, as well as the present concrete areas,
including walkways around the hill.
-The most adamant opinion is that a parking lot should
NOT be built below the hill. Visitors and locals alike overwhelm
ingly say they do not go up to the Column to look at a parking
lot. Enough spaces already surround the Column that if all were
filled with cars and buses the hilltop would be overcrowded A
parking lot in the meadow vwuld displace the deer most people
(especially children) like to see.
•
Bitter controversy erupted when a small forest was cut
to improve the view from Coxcomb Hill a few years ago, which
profited a local logger whose ambition might still be to clearcut
the entire city forest; and The 'Friends' were severely criticized
for removing the famous cherry trees planted at the Column as
a memorial to Astoria's war dead because they interfered with
camera angles
Astoria city officials wsuld be wise to embrace the
modest proposals of the citizen committee appointed to
devise alternative designs rather than knuckle under to big
city business moguls, whose arrogant disregard for adverse
economic and environmental impacts on lower river commun
ities dredging the river to protect Portland's mantime monopoly
will cause, is the source of considerable resentment
Although Astonans realize tourism has replaced
logging and fishing as the city’s current major industry, they do
not desire their hometow to be refabricated into a vacationers'
elysium Visitors are welcome but the Astona Column belongs
to Astoria
- michael M c C usker
L ewis & C lark E xpedition
hard work, wise and creative decisions (which have been rare),
and above all equitable community participation at all levels.
The Astoria/Megler Bridge is a symbol of the retreat of
Astoria's citizens from the maritime environment that built the
city Designed and built with considerable skill 35 years ago, the
bridge displaced a fleet of ferryboats that daily crossed the four
mile river between Astoria and now defunct Megler,Washington.
The steel bridge stands ankle deep in the river like a gigantic
museum skeleton Its body arches high over the river on the
Oregon side so that large ships can pass underneath and its
tail drags just above the water for about three miles beyond the
ship's channel to the Washington shore. The river no longer
plays a principle role in the lives of the people who live along
side it. Once and for a long time the river was the main highway
and major means of livelihood for most of the people who
settled its banks and uprooted the tribes of Indians with small
busy towns along its length.
History moves on. The USA claims world supremacy as
its collapsed nemisis rots in catastrophe, and the aftershocks of
its fall at least diminish the likelihood of a nuclear missile kssing
the mouth of the Columbia A massive earthquake is predicted
soon, the grinding and shifting of geological plates off our shore
(A problem for anyone running up the hills for shelter from a
tsunami and the downtown landfill dissolving into the river like
Alka Seltzer dunng an earthquake might be that the hills would
tumble down upon them.)
The crowing earth is pushing into sparsely populated
areas like irresistible tides and it should be expected that
eventually the moribund towns along the lower Columbia River
will be repopulated and doubled or tripled in size and that an
entirely new and incredibly larger than ever commerce will take
place based on population needs instead of resources. Only a
devastating catastrophe such as the anticipated earthquake will
prevent the Pacific Northwest from filling up.
The Millennial century just breaking ground commences
Astoria's third century, which inspires provocative questions:
Will Astoria in this new century be the great port it has always
wanted to be? Will Astoria be overwhelmed by a mushrooming
population? Will the Astoria/Megler Bndge be replicated a dozen
times? The old Victorian houses and churches preserved, bumf
in another series of fires or tom down and replaced with a
denser architecture that will terrace the hills in massive housing
developments and business malls? Will fleets of ships to meet
greater needs thoroughly modernize and expand port facilities
and possibly reverse the current project of refurbishing the city's
antiquity? Will Astoria prosper or conversely turn into a huge
and starving squalor?
A few years from now, probably beginning in 2004,
the bicentennial of Lewis & Clark's transcontinental trek across
the middle of North Amenca, from the Missouri River (the epic
began on May 14,1804) to the mouth of the Columbia River,
will be ardently celebrated as planned and promoted, especially
at the end of trail in Astona. Tens of thousands of tounsts are
optimistically expected to visit the reconstructed 'Corps of
Discovery's' winter camp of 1805-06 at Fort Clatsop on the
Lewis & Clark River that drains into Young’s Bay and in to
the Columbia — and SW Washington wants a fair share of the
hordes because Lewis & Clark stepped ashore on the north bank
of the Great River of the West first.
Probably much less celebrated or promoted will be
Astona’s bicentennial in 2011
The momentum of history has opposite cusps, such as
being propelled to greater achievements as a result of the past,
or its downside, history as a coffin with each passing moment
another nail hammering it shut Prosperity and decline are
temporary, a slipping from here to there The only real certainty
is that future Astoria is unlikely to be any place familiar to us.
Rolf Klep was a commercial and Navy artist and founder
of the Columbia River Maritime Museum He died in 1981
ELIZABETH A. BALDWIN
is pleased to announce the relocation
of her office for the practice of law to
536 BOND STREET
ASTORIA OREGON 97103
Across the street from her old office
(503)325-5137
Telephone number remains the same