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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2020 • B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2010
W
alking along Marine Drive Thursday with
his pro-freedom sign held high, Gearhart
resident Bill Palmberg Jr. beamed.
The 200-strong tea party rally in Astoria was his fi rst
political protest.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” he said.
“It’s exciting to see people involved like this.”
Like others in the crowd, Palmberg is unhappy
about the country’s record $1.4 trillion defi cit and the
burden it places on his children and grandchildren. He
wants to see the government pay down its debt and cut
spending.
“It’s a great country, but I’m worried about it,” he
said. “I’m tired of big government and big taxes. We
need a big change ... We need to get the government
out of our lives.”
Imagine how a wall of glass would trans-
form the windowless Duane Street side of the
Astoria Library.
That’s perhaps the most striking of the
design changes conjured up by Troy Ainsworth
as a way to bring the bunker-like concrete
building into the 21st century. Ainsworth and
Hal Ayotte are architects with Fletcher Farr
Ayotte, a Portland fi rm working on a plan
for remodeling Astoria’s City Hall to make it
more user-friendly.
Five years is barely a blink on nature’s timeline.
But it’s long enough for a rainforest to be reborn
on the North Coast Land Conservancy’s Circle Creek
property in Seaside.
Katie Voelke walked every inch of the site’s cow
pasture fi ve years ago as the nonprofi t’s land steward.
She marked every slope and soggy depression,
tested soil composition and hydrology and mapped out
a future forest that would look something like the one
that used to be there.
Then, she and others dragged decomposing logs
back onto the dairy farm, which was thoroughly cleared
of trees generations ago. Volunteers planted more than
8,000 saplings and shrubs strategically across the pas-
ture and along the banks of the creek.
Now, Voelke is the executive director of the land
conservancy, and the pasture is transforming before her
eyes.
“This was very much a pasture,” she said. “Now, it
is a rainforest. It’s just a very young rainforest.”
Bob Bridgens, left, of Warrenton, and Ken Leahy, of Hillsboro, carry their American fl ags to the front steps of the Clatsop
County Courthouse during a tea party rally on Tax Day in 2010.
The Clatsop County Fire Investigation Team investigates a
fi re that started at 2:30 a.m. Saturday that destroyed the
former Jewell Grange building.
A wall of glass on the Duane Street side of the Astoria Library
would replace a windowless wall and bring light streaming
into the reading room in this renovation rendering from 2010.
50 years ago — 1970
Scheduled completion of the fi rst potline at the
Northwest Aluminum Co. site in Warrenton has been
moved back three months to Sept. 30, 1972.
Bernard Goldhammer, power manager for the Bon-
neville Power Administration , told The Astorian that
the delay would give Northwest three summers to build
its fi rst potline, which is some 230 large, covered rect-
angular pots in which granulated alumina is converted
into molten aluminum.
Between the sunny weather and good clam tides, the beaches were packed in 2010 with vehicles and clam diggers near
Sunset Beach.
The site of the old Hammond m ill, just west
of Tongue Point, was the recommended loca-
tion for an Astoria sewage treatment lagoon
submitted Monday night to the Astoria City
Council by a special chamber of commerce
committee.
The C ity C ouncil took no action on the rec-
ommendation, and is supposed to pick a site
by May 1 so that fi nal engineering plans may
be begun in compliance with the state Depart-
ment of Environmental Quality schedule.
Annexation of Blue Ridge to the City of Asto-
ria came closer Monday night when the Astoria City
Council directed that a public hearing on the matter be
scheduled. The likelihood of annexing Tongue Point to
the city was also discussed.
The second Soviet ship to visit the Colum-
bia River in 20 years will be met by a 44-foot
vessel from the U.S. Coast Guard Cape Disap-
pointment station near the Lightship Colum-
bia sometime this afternoon, according to Lt.
Joe Tamalonis, station commander.
WASHINGTON — Air pollution will trigger a cata-
strophic warming of the earth in 200 years unless man
checks his plunge toward an overpopulated, indus-
trialized planet, a government weather scientist said
Wednesday.
A dynamite explosion which ripped a hole
early Wednesday morning in the side of the
36-foot Julie Lynn, moored at the Chinook
Mooring Basin, has left Pacifi c County sher-
iff’s deputies baffl ed following a two-day
investigation.
The investigation, which included offi cers
from the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Inspection
Offi ce, Portland, the U.S. Coast Guard Cape
Disappointment s tation, Ilwaco, and Pacifi c
County sheriff deputy, Jim Baria, failed to
identify any suspects or establish a motive for
the blast.
75 years ago — 1945
Cecil L. Griggs, representative of the state D epart-
ment of A griculture, met with milk producers and dis-
tributors of Clatsop County Wednesday in the circuit
courtroom to gather information on present milk oper-
ation here and indications of what the situation will be
after war emergency conditions lift.
Griggs’ questions indicated that the department is
studying the problem of what will happen to produc-
ers who entered the grade A consumers’ market for
Police search for leads in a Chinook boat bombing in 1970.
the emergency, have spent money for sanitation, yet
will be classed as temporary producers and dropped
when war-swollen demand decreases. Only a few such
producers are effected here, but N avy contracts have
effected others.
Among points brought out by producers was that
present high costs of feeds and labor would make oper-
ation impossible without the government subsidies
being received.
The Clatsop County L ivestock A ssociation
elected Robert Reed of Warrenton as presi-
dent at its meeting Tuesday night in Jewell.
The group also talked of the predatory ani-
mal problem which has forced nearly all stock
raisers in the Nehalem V alley to discontinue
operation. Bear, the stockmen said, are the
principal threat. They passed a resolution to
ask the county court for a bounty on bear.
Shipbuilding continues to dominate the fi eld of
industry in Oregon, although the state’s two basic
industries, lumbering and food processing, were slowly
gaining back their dominance.
The report, based on covered payroll reports, showed
that both the “basic” industries doubled their wage pay-
Three classes at Astoria Junior High School picked up four
large garbage cans of litter around the school grounds.
Pictured are Kathi Jackson and Matt Schuler dumping one
of the garbage cans in 1970.
ments between 1940 and 1944.
Plans for the installation of a new and mod-
ern confectionery store in the portion of the
Riviera B uilding on Bond Street, occupied
by the Hallaux Paint S tore for 14 years, were
announced today by W.C. “Curt” Hoare, Riv-
iera theater manager. Leonard Mattson, Bond
Street sandwich shop operator, and William
Stanley, Riviera popcorn stand owner, will
be identifi ed with Hoare in the new business
venture.
The Columbia River commercial fi shing fl eet went
to their drifts for opening of the season at noon today,
encouraged by reports of an upswing in salmon escape-
ment over Bonneville D am.
More than 1,200 of the boats were expected to dip
their nets into the Columbia today, as sport catches
around the Willamette River and Columbia sloughs
near Portland were hooking 10 to 12-pounders.
A number of Astorians, along with citizens
of other N orthwest cities, felt the slight jar
of an earthquake about 1:15 o’clock Sunday
afternoon.