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NORTH COAST TIMES EAGLE, AUGTEMBER 2006
EGIL UNANDER, ‘OUTWARD BOUND’ (ETCHING, 1986)
BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
The Astoria/Megler Bridge over the Columbia River was opened up to automobile and
truck traffic on August 27, 1966. The governors of Oregon and Washington, Mark Hatfield and
Dan Evans, cut the ribbon (a rare period in which both states were governed by high level and
capable governors at the same time, both of whom were liberal Republicans, a very rare species
these days). The Astoria Clowns, who had vigorously promoted building the bridge, were the first
to drive its length.
The bridge was built at a cost of $24 million and one human life, a construction super
visor who was knocked off the bridge and his body never recovered. One woman remembers
the early 1960s when the bridge was under construction as an unceasing pounding of piledrivers.
When the bridge was completed it was the final link to a continuous highway from Mexico to
Canada, and it displaced a ferry fleet that daily crossed the four-mile river.
The bridge arches over the river like a huge museum skeleton of a prehistoric beast.
Its body towers 200 feet over the water so that ships can pass underneath, and its long tail drops
to just above water for about three miles beyond the dredged ships’ channel to the opposite bank
on the Washington side which is called ‘Megler’, but there is no there there.
Besides displacing the ferries, the bridge took a large segment of people off the river,
which no longer plays a major role in the lives of those who live alongside it as a result
Once and for a long time the river was the main highway and means of livelihood for
most of the emigrants who settled on its banks and built small busy towns on both sides of its
lower length. For several decades paddle-wheeled steamboats hauled supplies, merchandise
and passengers up and down the river. Timber companies floated huge log rafts from the
decimated forests downriver to the deepwater ports of Portland, St. Helens, Longview and Astoria
for shipment all over the world in square-rigged sailing ships, or to the large local fleet of timber
schooners that worked along the Pacific Coast from Canada to California. A majority of Astoria
women and men were salmon fishers on the river, in the bays and out in the ocean; or they
worked in the fish canneries that once made Astoria the cannery capital of the world.
All that has changed, and nearly all of it is gone except for a few exhibits in the Columbia
River Maritime Museum that acts as a time capsule for preservation of what is nostalgically called
(publicly for commercial purposes) Astoria's ‘Golden Era'. The city suffered a series of economic
disasters, primarily from careless overexploitation of the timber and fish resources that briefly
made it rich and famous, and also from two calamitous fires that destroyed its downtown
business core each time. Astoria was denied federal aid after the tremendous fire of 1922 and
was forced to rebuild from its own resources, i.e., loans and bonds it might still be paying off more
than 80 years later, which continues to affect the city’s economy in the 21st century.
The fires changed the character of Astoria. Landfill at the riverfront replaced the wooden
pilings and piers much of the downtown had built upon over the river and which proved fatally
flammable. The waterfront was reconstructed, a forest-like reseeding, although many charred
pilings and burnt cannery buildings were left as they were instead of being cleared away.
Overlogging of the type that cut down forests from Maine through the entire northwest
changed the environment, and too much silt from runoff from the cutover mountains and hills
poured into the river’s tributaries and disturbed salmon cycles. Huge electricity generating dams
were built upriver that virtually wiped out the large salmon spawning runs. The fishing industry
along the lower river dwindled until only a very few men and women are able to make a living on
fishboats. The canneries that bought the fish are gone. The waterfront that used to be so busy is
virtually abandoned except for new restaurants and motels, and planned shopping malls.
Initial hopes that the bridge would bring prosperity to Astoria never materialized.
The beachtowns to the north and south have been the bridge’s major benefactors.
The Astoria/Megler Bridge was early nicknamed “The Bridge to Nowhere," though there
remain differences of opinion as to which side of the river was meant. It is not as old, nor
anywhere close to the beauty of the delicate and decaying bridges on the southern Oregon
coast.
A brochure about the Astoria/Megler Bridge printed soon after it opened 40 years ago
said that “the bridge is designed to withstand some of the toughest attacks of nature. Gusts of
wind of 150 mph from the fierce Pacific storms that occasionally batter the coast still leave the
bridge a safety factor. The concrete piers are built with an eye toward the river flood speed of
9 mph when whole trees sometimes are swept along by the raging water.”
Quite likely an earthquake and tsunami will be a part of the bridge’s future.
-MICHAEL McCUSKER
LNG IS FOOL ’S GOLD
‘A storia is the Pahs o f the Columbia River!’
-E G IL UNANDER, PRINCE OF ASTORIA'
(1934-1998)
Cannon Beach, Oregon
There have been many and varied flamboyant economic
schemes to make Astoria a world class port city surrounded by
thriving satellite communities.
First, of course (if early hopes of fur trading are left out),
was Astoria’s golden era of salmon fishing and canning that
made the lower Columbia River the cannery capital of the world
in the late 19th century, as well as logging of the great spruce
and fir forests that dominated the landscape. For a brief time,
Astoria had a population of nearly 30,000 (in the 1920s) and
anticipated a peak of 100,000 — shamelessly touting itself
as the New York City of the Pacific Coast.
But a century of short-sighted greed and careless
oversight of the environment that enriched Astoria decimated
the salmon, clearcut the forests and ripped apart the big dreams;
and the lower Columbia decayed on both sides
More recent grandiose (perhaps desperate) schemes
such as wall to wall aluminum plants on both sides of the river
(which would make the lower Columbia, in the words of Presi
dent Nixon, “the light metals capital of the world"), giant coal
docks, oil module manufacturing for the Alaska oil fields, to
name a few, were stillborn. Now we are preemptively invaded
by LNG right here at the end of the Lewis & Clark Trail
The notion of liquefied natural gas as an interim energy
source between oil and alternative fuels is as short-sighted as
every other response to the oil crisis that is crafted to keep
profits in the hands of current oil and energy moguls — and
would prolong the deliberate delay in research and develop
ment of bio-fuels.
Whatever value put to LNG as a brief alternative energy
source, the method of Calpine LNG corporation (with silent com
plicity of the Port of Astoria Commission) to sneak through the
back door and abrogate public participation laws, renders
suspect every claim they make Apologists say the secrecy
was necessary because of competition and point to the three
other LNG corporations who want a piece of the Columbia —
but that is an egregious argument at its very root: the competition
was probably waiting for Calpine to covertly get its lease and
then rush in to gobble up the lower Columbia while the shock
was still setting in.
The lower Columbia community is divided over the
prospect of LNG terminals. Alternate media seems to have
an affect on people’s opinions: commercial radio, for example,
booms with LNG ads, and those who listen are more likely
to support their point of view Listeners to public radio station
KMUN -FM, on the other hand, are generally in opposition,
not least for the reason they are spared the torrent of LNG spin,
and programming is often critical of devastating the river estuary
and destroying Columbia River culture for corporate profit
As usual the pro-corporate agenda gets the most press
and fanfare: LNG banners at the Clatsop County Fair are just
one example.
There are all sorts of serious LNG issues that are
not being honestly addressed by the PR spinners: problems
of safety, security, pollution, ocean and river travel, fishing and
commerce, the wisdom of building such a volatile terminal on
an earthquake subduction zone. And there is also the matter
that the federal government claims the right to overrule any
local decision to exclude LNG. In June (2005) the U S. Senate
rejected a proposal allowing state governors to prevent LNG
because of public health or environmental concerns
Astoria is experiencing a self-styled renaissance',
primarily a population explosion intermingled with an influx of
tourism, waterfront “renewal" and restoration of old properties
Although supporters hope for so-called family-wage’ jobs from
LNG to alleviate the menial and lowpaying employment chronic
in River City and environs, others are concerned LNG terminals
and traffic will wipe out what they see as vital economic and
cultural gains of the past few years Others fear for their health,
even their lives.
Columbia River dwellers are threatened from two
directions — federally-sanctioned low-level radioactive release
from Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which developed the pluto
nium used in the Nagasaki atomic bomb in August 1945; and
gaseous pollution/combustion (possibly much worse) from
liquefied natural gas The river gets hot stuff on one end, LNG
on the other.
-M IC H A E L M cCUSKER
(NOTE, Augtember, 2005))
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