Katherine Lacaze
The Columbia River Maritime Museum’s exhibit ‘Twin Palaces of the Pacific’ includes a model of the S.S. Great Northern.
Museum offers a glimpse of
travel aboard a luxury liner
‘Twin Palaces of the Pacific’ exhibit shares story of two ships
BY KATHERINE LACAZE
Travel back in time at the Columbia
River Maritime Museum to when the forgot-
ten town of Flavel, four miles downstream
of Astoria, provided port to the world’s two
fastest luxury liners — the S.S. Great North-
ern and S.S. Northern Pacific.
The museum’s recently opened exhibit,
“Twin Palaces of the Pacific,” follows the
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journey of these grand ships, which estab-
lished a contiguous route between San Fran-
cisco and Portland.
“Being able to go from Portland to San
Francisco, partially by railway and partially
by luxury liner, would’ve been a more lux-
urious and faster way to go,” said assistant
curator Matthew Palmgren.
Both ships were built in 1914 by William
Cramp & Sons Ship & Engine Building Co.
in Philadelphia on behalf of James J. Hill,
an aggressive and keen transportation mogul
from St. Paul, Minnesota, dubbed “The
Empire Builder.” Hill operated railroads in
the Pacific Northwest at the time.
Hill wanted to extend his railway down
the coast to San Francisco to provide trans-
continental travel in time for the Panama-Pa-
cific International Exposition in San Fran-
cisco in 1915 but he ran into opposition from
competing railroads.
Not to be deterred for long, Hill
responded by commissioning his “Twin Pal-
aces of the Pacific” to serve travelers instead.
“The steam ship company was an exten-
sion of his business empire,” said museum
curator Jeff Smith.
See Page 7