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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 2020)
B1 THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 2020 CONTACT US FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian Alyssa Evans aevans@dailyastorian.com Photos by Ron Baldwin Floating homes. A green boathouse. Mother Nature at your door Living on the water By RON BALDWIN I Houseboats in John Day. KNOWING YOUR FLOATING HOMES Boathouse — A structure intended to house a boat. Normally never moved or moved with great diffi culty. Houseboat — A vessel with a house-like structure designed to be moved occasionally or often. Built on a barge or scow hull, many are self-powered. Floathouse — A house built on a log raft. Not intended to be moved but anchored in place. Move- able with great eff ort and expense. Floating home — A house built on fl oats, an- chored in place and never moved. Liveaboard — A boat big enough to be used as a home. Usually moored in a marina or other anchor- age. Used for pleasure cruising. A blue houseboat. t has long been the dream of many Northwesterners to live a simple life on the water. A houseboat on the Columbia River, or perhaps a livea- board sailboat on one of its tributaries. Cruising about in the summer months, then overwintering in a snug harbor. Or maybe, living year-round in a house built on a log raft, rising and fall- ing twice a day in rhythm with the c os- mos and Mother Nature at your door. And, like all dreams, these scenarios may or may not be what each seems. The urge to live on the water is as old as the fi rst boat. A fl oating home can be as small as a pickup truck or as big as the Thalamegos, a houseboat built by Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy IV Philopator. His three-stor y palace on a catamaran measured 377 inches long by 66 feet wide. The ship was decorated with 60 inch marble colonnades embellished with plenty of gold, jewels and ivory. The ship, which sported 1,200 oars- men, was symbolic of power from the god Dionysus to the human (Greek) royal line. Although houseboats sold in Wash- ington state last year for upwards of $6 million, and billionaire yachts are val- ued in the tens of millions, most house- boats are substantially less grand than these modern day pharaohs. Besides, where are you going to fi nd 1,200 oarsmen? The Northwest joins fl eet Water habitation came to the North- west with humankind. When Europe- ans came, native peoples were already living on the water. Liveaboard was the standard until defendable settle- ments were established. Soon, the Columbia and other river system shorelines were dotted with river homes along every sheltered slough and channel. Often the people who lived on the river made their liv- ing near the river. Gillnetters, log raf- ters and boommen, tug and barge oper- ators, fur tradesmen, horse seiners and marine construction workers made up a large segment of the water-bound population. Houseboats, fl oat houses, boat- houses and boats large enough to live on have been a feature of life on the Columbia since those early days, but changes in the patterns have been See Houseboats, Page B2
