THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2019 • B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2009
K
NAPPA — Many decades ago, to protect a
mainline logging road from fl ooding, a sec-
tion of Knappa’s Big Creek was moved off
its historic stream bed and into a new channel blasted
out of bare basalt.
Safely out of the road’s way on Hampton Affi liates
property, the creek hurtled through the rock-walled
chute about six miles above Big Creek Fish Hatchery.
For the 25 years he’s worked for Hampton, log-
ging supervisor Bud Henderson, also a member of the
Nicolai-Wickiup Watershed Council, has known the
chute was a problem.
But it became a real issue in 1994, when hatchery
managers started allowing unmarked adult salmon
and steelhe ad past the hatchery walls to spawn natu-
rally in the creek bed.
The chute created a velocity barrier for the fi sh.
The water was fl owing so fast, it stopped salmon and
trout from swimming through and accessing 11 miles
of spawning grounds and rearing habitat above.
“Through fi sh monitoring we did through the
watershed council, we determined that chute was an
impediment to upstream migration of adult salmon
and steelhead,” Henderson said. “It was a barrier
to up and down stream migration of juvenile fi sh in
almost all stages.”
This summer, a project coordinated by Hampton
and the w atershed c ouncil used over $388,000 to
realign the mainline logging road, install two bridges,
block off the chute and move the stream back to its
historic channel.
The project lifted the barrier to valuable fi sh habi-
tat above the hatchery, and could yield a major boost
in natural fi sh production on the creek.
When fuel prices rocketed past $3 per gal-
lon last year, lots of Clatsop County residents
parked their cars and hopped on “The Bus.”
They must have enjoyed the ride. When
gas prices went back down, ridership contin-
ued to grow.
Operated by Sunset Empire Transporta-
tion District, a fl eet of more than 35 brightly
colored environmentally friendly buses pro-
vide more than 8,000 rides a week, whisking
people to work, school, shipping and doctor’s
appointments.
The district’s goal is to be a model for the
rest of rural Oregon.
The North Coast continued to be battered by a
giant storm today with warnings of high surf and
more rain and wind to come. As rain and wind lashed
the region Thursday night, part of a deck collapsed at
the Red Lion Inn in Astoria, plunging fi ve guests into
the Columbia River. All that remains of the deck is
the handrail.
50 years ago — 1969
Two photos, taken from the Frank Woodfi eld col-
lection and loaned by the present owners, Ed Ross and
Joe Dyer, show some of the industrial life and cele-
brations that featured life in Astoria’s historic past.
The c entennial celebration of 1911, marking the
100th anniversary of the city’s founding, was a nota-
ble event in Astoria history. Those were the early days
of aviation. T he Curtiss biplane, shown in one of
the photos here, was brought down from Portland to
perform for the festival. It was a highlight of the big
festival.
SCAPPOOSE — A 210-foot gravel barge
struck a bank and capsized Thursday, dump-
ing its cargo into the Multnomah Channel of
the Columbia River and sinking a 100-foot
tugboat, which was pushing the barge.
Two crewmen on the tug, Noydena, escaped
injury, said spokesma n for Knappton Tow-
boat Co. of Astoria and Portland.
The Noydena’s cabin and superstructure
were torn off by the capsizing barge. Damage
to both vessels was not known immediately,
and the towboat company was trying to sal-
vage the tug.
With the return of Fall, the ever popular Fort Ste-
vens State Park returns to a quiet, scenic area used by
a handful of people brave enough to ignore the rain
and cold.
Those using Coffenbury Lake now include only a
few brave sailors or hikers and seagulls.
The park invites its summer visitors to enjoy its
lovely Coffenbury Lake, broad ocean beach and
enormous campground. The camping area has room
Crew members from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alert link arms and fl oat in a line in the chilly Columbia River on a rainy
Thursday morning. Only under extreme circumstances, for example where the captain has given the order to abandon
ship, would the survival suits be used.
A seining crew exhibits large salmon hauled from the
Columbia River.
for 259 tents and 225 trailers. Val Jones, park man-
ager, said there were 173,000 overnight guests during
the 1968-69 fi scal year.
More than 250,000 cubic yards of earth
had to be moved to prepare a site in Warren-
ton for the Northwest Aluminum reduction
plant. A promotional advertisement stated
“They Moved a Mountain to Develop This
Site.”
After the grading job leveled the land,
the project was ready for the construction of
roads on site to be used for moving materials
during the initial stages of construction.
“As the project develops, we at Northwest
Aluminum look forward to becoming a good
neighbor and member of the growing indus-
trial community of the Sunset Empire,” the
ad continued.
75 years ago — 1944
Mrs. R.K. Booth, 245 Kensington Ave., has some-
thing new in the way of Halloween “trick or treat”
stories to offer today.
All evening long the neighborhood children with
their grinning jack-o-lanterns jangled the door bell
demanding sustenance. As the evening drew to a
close, Mrs. Booth again answered a peal of the door-
bell and was surprised to fi nd two sailors waiting on
her porch.
Grinning sheepishly, the two declared, “We get
hungry, too!”
SEASIDE — Mrs. Paul D. Christerson has
received word from her husband, a N avy lieu-
tenant who was aboard the U.S. a ircraft car-
rier Princeton, that he is safe. The Princeton
was sunk in the Philippines battle recently,
but most of the crew were saved.
Mrs. Christerson is making her home here
with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Cannon.
The new U.S. n aval hospital, sprawled fi nger-like
over the 60 acres of former pasture land and wooded
knolls three miles southeast of Astoria near the Wal-
luski River, has now received its fi rst contingent of
The site preparation work at Northwest Aluminum in Warrenton took over a year to
complete. The silty clay soil could not be worked when it was wet, and an unusually wet
year caused many delays.
Camping at Fort Stevens State Park.
wounded and diseased young N avy men from the far
fl ung reaches of the Pacifi c.
From trains, 400 of the men were swiftly trans-
ferred to ambulances and buses and sped to beds wait-
ing to receive them now for nearly two weeks. The
22 nurses, 25 doctors — many with combat experi-
ence — and scores of naval corpsmen and Wave phar-
macists are now busy at their task of restoring these
patients to health as quickly as possible.
This huge 500-bed hospital — the only one of its
kind in Oregon — must of necessity remain a curios-
ity to most Astorians. Its grounds and corridors will
remain closed to all except the few with defi nite busi-
ness or those whose own relatives and friends are
patients there.
American voters in returning Franklin
D. Roosevelt to the presidency for a fourth
term have also given the D emocratic P arty a
majority in C ongress and the S enate, mount-
ing returns from the nation’s fi rst wartime
election in 80 years showed today.
Astoria is quietly observing Armistice D ay today
with business houses and industrial plants generally
closed throughout the city. American Legion fl ags are
fl ying along all-but-deserted downtown streets this
morning with traffi c at a standstill.
Marine authorities have another sea mys-
tery on their hands today — the case of a
pilotless fi shing boat, missing since Oct. 10 —
and found wallowing in the Pacifi c, 40 miles
west of Destruction Island, off the Olympic
P eninsula, six days later.
Discovery of the vessel, The Quill, was dis-
closed by two Seattle men who sighted and
boarded the abandoned ship.
They said they found almost $3,000 in the
cabin, and that although the vessel was tak-
ing on some water, it was undamaged, with
all troll lines set, and 300 pounds of rotting
fi sh in the holds.
A gaff hook was missing from the rack,
however, and belief was expressed that the
owner of the boat, Victor Carlson, of Marys-
ville, Washington, was thrown overboard
and drowned while attempting to haul a fi sh
aboard.
This Curtiss biplane fl ew for the 1911 Astoria centennial celebration. It was an amphibian,
with wheels for land landings and fl oats for coming down on the water.