B1
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2021
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2021 • B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2011
I
magine the sound of a chain saw.
Now, imagine that sound reverberating oﬀ the
walls in your bedroom — a bedroom you’ve paid a
few hundred dollars for, while visiting Astoria, maybe for
the ﬁ rst time.
That’s what work on the Astoria Bridge could sound
like — starting next year and not ending until 2016.
The ﬁ ve-year, $50 million project to repaint and repair
the Astoria Bridge has been compared to other sounds,
from a motorcycle to a jet engine. But no matter how loud
is too loud, it is about to make its way over to the Ore-
gon side.
“We’re just starting the public process with the city,”
said Larry McKinley, regional manager for the Oregon
Department of Transportation. “We’re looking at four to
six years of bridge work to get it up to standards.”
SEASIDE — Electric cars may be just around
the corner — or, rather, driving down U.S. High-
way 101 — and when they do, Seaside may be
ready to give them an energy boost.
With the Oregon Department of Transpor-
tation already planning to place charging sta-
tions in Tillamook, Cannon Beach and Astoria
next spring, Seaside businesses are considering
how they might operate a station of their own for
electric car drivers to recharge their batteries.
Entrepreneurs Chad Biasi and Hans van der
Meer, partners in the Portland-based EV4 Ore-
gon LLC, are talking to local businesses about
paying $150 a month for ﬁ ve years for a licensing
agreement. If at least six business owners agree,
the company would install a two-car recharging
station in Seaside.
It was 1943 when Staﬀ Sgt. James H. Lang was cap-
tured as a prisoner of war and held for more than two
years in Nazi-occupied Europe.
With a smuggled camera and the clothes on his back,
Lang survived the 25-month, four-day ordeal, settled
back into life in America, raised a family and traveled the
world. His POW days had almost been forgotten.
That is, until a box in storage revealed a manuscript
and the never-before-seen photos that have now been
published almost 60 years later.
“Kriegies & Goons: My Life in Nazi POW Camps,”
by James H. Lang, has been published three years after
Lang’s death, and just in time for Veterans Day.
Richard Lang, a retired member of the U.S. Coast
Guard and the former Astoria d ispatch manager, went to
Arizona to move his father’s belongings into storage after
his father had suﬀ ered a stroke and had to be moved into
a care facility about a year prior to his death.
That’s when he discovered the box that contained the
secret life of a POW.
50 years ago — 1971
The U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender Cactus, which
grounded on the Grays Harbor jetty Sept. 20, will be
decommissioned, according to the Coast Guard’s 13th
District oﬃ ce in Seattle.
The Cactus, home-based in Astoria, was extensively
damaged when she struck the rocks on a sunken portion of
the jetty. Rocks cut a 3-foot gash in the vessel’s bow sec-
tion. Sea water ﬂ ooded the main hold and engine room,
causing more damage.
Another buoy tender will be reassigned to Astoria, but
her arrival is not expected until next spring. This will be
less expensive than repairing the 29-year-old Cactus and
keeping her in service, the Coast Guard said.
The Burger Shoppe, just oﬀ Marine Drive on
Hamburg Avenue and Industry Street in Asto-
ria, opened for business last Wednesday.
The building, a prefabricated structure, mea-
sures 12 feet by 16 feet.
The area near Knappa Slough where Lewis and Clark
camped brieﬂ y on their westward trek could become a
national historical landmark.
The Clatsop County Historical Society, after passing
a resolution on the matter, appointed a committee of four
Wednesday night to examine this possibility. The resolu-
tion was sponsored by Knappa logger Robert Ziak and
Columbia River Maritime Museum curator Michael
Naab, who joined the organization Wednesday, and Mary
Louise Flavel, a longtime member.
Ziak said he has the documentation and that this area is
almost the only area left “which is almost like exactly as it
The Astoria Bridge is seen above the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in 2011.
was when Lewis and Clark came through.”
Dant & Russell, Inc. will not reopen its West-
port Lumber Co. mill, according to Bob Smith,
who is in charge of production facilities for the
Portland corporation.
Smith said the shutdown was due to a number
of business factors. The mill was closed in early
August due to the company’s inability to ship
the heavy hemlock lumber to it manufactures
because of the West Coast longshoremen strike.
At the time of the shutdown, Joe Heigel, Dant &
Russell president, said it is not economically fea-
sible to ship hemlock lumber by rail because of
its weight. All the lumber from both the West-
port mill and Warrenton Lumber Co., another
Dant & Russell facility, had been shipped by
ship and barge through the Port of Astoria prior
to the strike.
Signalitis has come to Seaside.
Formerly a stop-and-go, hurry-through-the-intersec-
tion town, two ﬂ ashing traﬃ c signals recently installed
have brought big city boredom to the coast. Now a third
blinking black box may soon be looming before U.S. High-
way 101 travelers at the Broadway Street intersection.
The Port of Astoria’s east and west mooring
basins may be merged into one.
Port commissioners, irked at the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers for restrictions imposed
on use of the East Mooring Basin breakwater,
instructed port engineer Tom Amberg to do the
preliminary work necessary for moving the East
Mooring Basin ﬂ oats to the West Mooring Basin.
75 years ago — 1946
Construction of the two trawler -tuna combination
ﬁ shing vessels built for the Paciﬁ c Exploration C o. at
the Astoria Marine Construction C o. shipyard is nearing
completion. These steel-hulled boats are equipped with
bait tanks.
Several ﬁ shing boats and other crafts are being over-
hauled and repaired at the yard. The tug Melville, owned
by the Knappton Towboat C o. , is getting a new bow stem,
following a collision with an oil tanker.
land than is actually occupied by the present net-
work of streets and houses. It will also show the
vast majority of these streets laid out in rectan-
gular pattern — only in parts of the west end has
there been an attempt to ﬁ t streets to topography .
In far too many cases it has been impossi-
ble to build according to the plat, as streets just
wouldn’t work out on cliﬀ fronts or on gulches.
And in some cases streets that have been built
according to old plats have slid down the hill-
sides because no thought was given to the sliding
ground that prevails on a considerable amount
of Astoria’s land surface.
It is in an eﬀ ort to correct such conditions,
which have been detrimental to the city’s devel-
opment, that the engineering department is now
redrafting the map.
Astoria today observed Armistice Day, the 28th anni-
versary of the end of World War I, in quiet style.
An American Legion committee headed by Bill Van
Dusen lined Commercial Street and other main business
streets with American ﬂ ags, as has been the legion post’s
custom for many years.
There was, however, no parade and the ﬁ rst main
attraction of the day is this afternoon’s football game at
2 p.m. between the Astoria Junior High School Finger-
lings and Ilwaco High on Gyro Field.
The Astoria Athletic Association was today
arranging a compensatory game for the Asto-
ria High School football team, which was denied
its ﬁ rst chance at Oregon high school football
honors in 25 years Saturday when the northern
subdivision of the District 3 championship was
decided by ballot rather than gridiron playoﬀ .
The leaking lumber schooner Helen, her holds pumped
fairly dry in emergency action by the U.S. Navy here to
prevent her sinking, left late Sunday under her own power
for the Kaiser shipyards in Portland to undergo repairs.
An auxiliary pump from Portland was put aboard the
vessel for the trip upriver to assist ship gear in keeping her
dry. Cause of the leak was undetermined.
Astoria’s engineering department is making
over the map of the city in an eﬀ ort to make it
more neatly ﬁ t the rugged terrain of the penin-
sula on which the city is built.
The map not only is being reconstructed on
paper, but on the ground as well, in a long-range
program designed to provide future city plan-
ners with adequate information on which to base
their projects for the city’s growth.
No longer will the city grow haphazardly on
a gridiron system of streets arranged merely by
drawing lines on paper, without regard for cliﬀ s
or gulches, which might make transference of
the streets from paper to ground impossible.
A glance at the map of the city will show a vast
amount of land plotted in city streets — far more
RIGHT: James Lang was a
prisoner of war during World
War II in Nazi-occupied Europe.
His book, ‘Kriegies & Goons:
My Life in Nazi POW Camps,’
was published in 2010.
The Westport Lumber Co. sawmill in 1971.
James Lang was captured as a prisoner of war during World War II. He used a smuggled
camera to document his stay of more than 25 months.