THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2020 • B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2010
T
he P ort of Astoria has tried and failed once again
to get Oregon LNG’s lawsuit against the agency
thrown out of U.S. District Court.
According to court records, Magistrate Judge John
Jelderks denied the Port’s second motion to dismiss the
company’s breach of contract suit this week.
The Port has objected to Jelderks’ fi nding, which will
be referred to a federal judge for formal ruling.
Oregon LNG is suing the Port for delaying a 30-year
renewal of its lease of state land for the company’s pro-
posed liquefi ed natural gas terminal in Warrenton.
For three years, people who live near the
four-block area above Bond Street that was
turned topsy-turvy by a January 2007 landslide
have been dealing with its aftermath.
Debris still covers the south side of Bond
Street from Hume to First Street. An above-
ground water pipe runs along the north side of
Bond Street, next to the curb.
On the hillside above Bond, 15 families that
live in a neighborhood that runs from Second
Street, east along Duane Street and onto the
100 block of Exchange Street, had a terrible
time driving to their homes. The pavement at
First and Duane streets cracked and buckled as
movement below pushed it upward, so the city
opened an emergency access road from Third
Street along the formerly unused Exchange
Street right-of-way. Despite temporary fi xes,
driving on Duane Street was like riding a buck-
ing bronco.
But, now, things are looking up for residents
in the vicinity of the slide. A more permanent
improvement to Duane Street was completed
a couple of months ago and grant money has
come through to help the city relocate the water
pipe from Bond Street down to Marine Drive,
where it will be installed underground.
Clatsop County Manager Duane Cole told the Ore-
gon Board of Forestry Thursday that people and local
communities should come fi rst when it comes to man-
aging state forests.
He advocated for a policy of “social sustainability” in
timber management.
His comments came during a meeting of the 14-mem-
ber Public Advisory Committee, assembled late last year
to help the Forestry Board review how the state manages
almost 650,000 acres of forestlands, including the Clat-
sop and Tillamook State Forest.
Social sustainability, Cole said, recognizes that reli-
able, sustainable timber harvesting provides not just
money, but a strong social fabric for the people and com-
munities that rely most heavily on timber-related jobs.
A tree grows from cracks in the pavement near the corner of First and Commercial streets in 2010. The Astoria City
Council is considering creating a pedestrian trail from Duane Street to Commercial Street.
Commercial Street in Astoria in 1922. The houses were built on pilings and wood bins in front of each house were fi lled
for heat and also to heat the saunas that were installed in many houses during the early 1920s. The Koskela steam bath
house is pictured lower right.
50 years ago — 1970
Steam baths, and every block business in the early
1920s in Astoria, are still catering to approximately 400
customers a week today.
A steam bath is technically a hot room a person sits in
to perspire. Whether the heat is dry or wet, 150 degrees
or 200 degrees, the result is basically the same. The
terms used for the hot room can be “Banya,” Russian
for a heat bath; “Sauna,” Finnish for a dry rock heat in a
wood constructed room up to 200 degrees; and “Steam,”
the American heat room term with temperatures up to
150 degrees with steam produced by putting water on
rocks and on hot steam pipes.
The Koskelo family has been in the steam bath busi-
ness for over 50 years in the Astoria area. Kaarlo Koskelo
came to Astoria from Finland in 1919 and worked in a
steam bath located in the back of the Baptist church near
the present post offi ce for one year, before buying prop-
erty and a steam bath on 10th Street between Commer-
cial and Duane. This steam bath was destroyed in the fi re
of Dec. 8, 1922 that burned a large portion of Astoria.
In 1924, Koskely started construction of the Neptune
Steam Baths on Bond Street.
Annexation of the Blue Ridge area to the city
of Astoria would involve much expense to the
city, a city staff report to the city council said
Monday night.
Information from the fi re, police and pub-
lic works departments in the report indicated
that the costs to the city from annexation of the
housing area might be considerable, but exact
total fi gures weren’t given.
Residents of Blue Ridge, on the east edge of
the city, have petitioned the city for annexation.
It’s now up to the city council to decide whether
it wants to vote to annex the area or hold an
election in the city to see what Astoria residents
think about it.
A deep low center with an associated storm front is
about 350 miles off the s outhern Oregon C oast and mov-
ing this way, according to the U.S. Weather Bureau at
Clatsop airport.
A 90-foot crab fi shing boat, probably the
largest now in the Northwest, pulled into Asto-
ria Marine Construction Co. on the Lewis and
Clark River Tuesday for repairs after sailing
from Mobile, Alabama, through the Panama
Canal and up the Pacifi c coast.
75 years ago — 1945
Establishment of an hourly wage scale of $1.10 for
Astoria salmon cannery workers classifi ed as “liver
pickers” has been authorized by the war labor board in
Seattle and a WLB directive received here putting the
new schedule into effect.
Pfc William Kiminki and Pfc. Reina Baase
The Pacifi c Venture boat in 1970, which was used to fi sh
for crab.
The Clatsop Community College library construction is
nearing completion with dedication set for April 10, 1970.
The stone-and-glass structure includes three fl oors and
will also house facilities for the audio visual center and
the art instruction center. The building cost a total of
$410,000 with $40,000 of that amount for furnishings.
arrived in Astoria Monday night after 33
months in Australia, New Guinea, the Ne ther-
lands, East Indies and Biak, where they served
in a signal construction company attached to
the A rmy A ir F orce much of the time, near the
41st division and Astorians in Company L.
Both men have three campaign stars. They
have worked together nearly all the time since
they went overseas in the same outfi t and during
their 33 months in the south Pacifi c have seen
many Astoria men.
Reports from the Astoria Post Offi ce on 1944 business
indicate the year broke records in nearly all departments,
with one of the most noticeable increases shown in the
airmail, according to Mr. Euna Pearl Burke, postmaster.
What the well-bred serviceman should
answer when a hostess blithely asks him “What
were you in real life,” and other hints on party
manners for all occasions are cleverly sum-
moned up in “Here’s How” one of the booklets
available to servicemen at the Astoria United
Service Organizations.
The USO here has consistently led or been
near the top in the amount of religious and
educational pamphlets distributed to men and
women in uniform.
The religious material is for all three faiths
– Protestant, Catholic and Jewish and includes
testaments, prayer books, missals, rosaries,
mezuzahs, Jewish calendars, picture cards,
prayer cards and 50 other items.
A demonstrated need for high school classes in agri-
culture and evening classes for adults in farm mechan-
ics together with a generally expanded vocational train-
ing program was the gist of a report made by William
Cox, city vocational program training coordinator, at
a meeting Monday night of the Astoria apprenticeship
commission.
It is the fi rst such completed record in the state of
Oregon. The investigation indicated that there was little
need for any change in the home economic instruction
training program in the schools but that there was a need
for adult classes in homemaking.
Plans for a proposed panty sale are being
considered more or less seriously today by Asto-
ria Police Chief John Acton with the arrival of
another consignment of women’s under-clothes
at police headquarters for temporary storage.
According to Acton, members of the force fi nd
the pink unmentionables hidden away here and
there in the brush in various districts of the
city, where they have apparently been cached
by some petty thief following a raid on some-
body’s clothes line.