B1
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2021
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2021 • B1
WATER UNDER
THE BRIDGE
COMPILED BY BOB DUKE
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2011
A
clot of teenagers, clad in blankets, thin jackets
and jeans and huddled in close quarters with one
another, stiﬀ ened in the foggy, freezing air Tues-
day night in the courtyard of Astoria High School. T hey
erected a cardboard camp to sleep in and divvied up din-
ner; some crackers, dry pasta, a piece of bread and an
apple sauce cup .
“Cold was an understatement,” said 15-year-old
sophomore Erin Hulti. “It was freezing. I kept waking up
in the middle of the night thinking it was time to go in.”
After snuggling — and mostly failing — all night to
sleep, they staggered into the morning and into class,
where most struggled to stay awake, let alone learn.
The group of 28 students from the high school
camped out and ate meager rations to show others the
more desperate circumstances homeless students face
for basic survival, all while trying to better themselves
through an education.
While most youth homelessness in Clatsop County
involves less extreme measures, such as shared hous-
ing and couch surﬁ ng, the demonstrators hoped to raise
awareness of the persistent housing instability that often
keeps students from reaching their potential.
It looks like Astoria will not be joining Seat-
tle and Los Angeles in support of the Occupy
movement.
Hoping to urge local leaders to support the
movement, eight members of the Occupy Asto-
ria Oregon group made their way to the Asto-
ria City Council meeting on Monday night. In
hand, they brought a draft resolution, asking
for the council’s support and adoption.
But the city had just one thing to say –
thanks, but no thanks.
“Thank you for this resolution,” Mayor Wil-
lis Van Dusen told the group. “It’s not my deci-
sion, it’s the c ouncil’s, but the c ouncil has never
passed resolutions on either side that are really,
in my opinion, out of our jurisdiction. This is a
national issue.”
Santa gave the reindeer and sleigh a rest as he and his helpers joined the ABATE North Coast chapter’s 23rd annual Toy
Run in 2011.
LEFT: Mourners of the Cannery Cafe erected a memorial of wreaths, photos and other remembrances in 2011 for the
one-year anniversary of the ﬁ res that gutted No. 1 and No. 10 Sixth St. buildings. RIGHT: The U.S. Coast Guard went to the
rescue for Santa Claus and delivered him safely to the Astoria Air Station for a Christmas party in 1971.
Out with the old and in with the new certainly rings
true this New Year’s Eve, as the new year is rung in and
the Astoria b icentennial comes to an end.
The Astoria b icentennial New Year’s Eve Bash, at the
Liberty Theatre and then the Banker’s Suite, will wrap
up a year of festivities, which included such guests as
the visiting Astor families from New York City and Lon-
don, sister-city delegates from Walldorf , Germany, Reba
McEntire and Gov. John Kitzhaber .
“This New Year’s Eve is going to be the ﬁ nal bash
and we want to go out with a bang,” b icentennial d irec-
tor Paulette McCoy said. “I’m going to miss it. I’ve
enjoyed it so much, working with all of the volunteers
and it’s sad for me that it’s over.”
50 years ago — 1971
The ﬁ rst sizable piece of lower Columbia River prop-
erty to be acquired by deed as part of the federal gov-
ernment’s Lewis and Clark National Wildlife Refuge
changed hands on Tuesday in Astoria.
Representatives of the U.S. Department of Interi-
or’s Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, headed by
regional director John D. Findlay, accepted a deed from
the Clatsop County Duck Hunters Association in a cere-
mony in the oﬃ ce of attorney George Fulton.
Turned over to the agency for perpetual management
was 247 acres of duck hunting property on the upper end
of Burnside Island, just upriver from Tongue Point.
A steelhead ﬁ sherman probably is the most
hardy of the outdoor sportsman. He will brave
the worst elements Mother Nature dishes out,
standing at times shoulder to shoulder with oth-
ers in pouring rain or snow ﬂ urries.
The steelheader will drive for miles to get to
his favorite stream long before daybreak and he
has been known to ﬁ ght for “squatter’s rights”
and to challenge the landowner.
The steelheader regards several Clatsop
County streams, Big Creek in particular, as
among the best in Oregon and ﬁ shermen by the
hundreds head to that choice Knappa stream
during the winter season. Most arrive early in
the morning from Portland and the Willamette
Valley.
Gary Johansen has kept his property
unposted for more than 10 years. The creek
runs through three-quarters of a mile of his
property and both sides of the stream have
been jammed with anglers in recent weeks. He
considers that stretch of Big Creek, from the
old highway bridge down to tidewater, the best
steelheading of the entire creek.
Gary Johansen posts a no trespassing sign at his property near Big Creek after acts of vandalism in 1971.
But Johansen posted both sides of the stream
along his property Tuesday morning and this
closes another chunk of once-public ﬁ shing
access at Big Creek.
“I’ve had it up to here. I’m tired of cleaning
up after those litterbugs. I’ve thought of clos-
ing my property to those Portland people for
some time, but what brought this about was
one of them leaving my cattle gate open once
too often,” Johansen said.
75 years ago — 1946
A week of heavy rains and windstorms ended here
Sunday with colder weather, accompanied by the gusts
of a dying storm and ﬂ urries of snow and hail. Snowfall
was fairly heavy on higher hills of the lower Columbia
district, although most of it melted as it fell.
Floods throughout Oregon left more than
3,500 people homeless today while residents of
the north central states plowed through drift-
ing snow and the southern portion of the coun-
try continued to bask in mild weather.
Alarmed by an increasing number of slides on steep
city hillsides last winter, the C ity C ommission will seek
to prepare a new ordinance to prevent uncontrolled grad-
ing operations within the city limits.
Several hotels and apartments in Astoria
present serious ﬁ re hazards, principally due
State highway oﬃ cials worked to address an area prone to slides near Westport in 1971.
to overcrowding and expansion caused by the
housing shortage here, and the ﬁ re department
is exerting pressure on owners to force correc-
tion of dangerous conditions, City Manager
J.O. Conville informed the C ity C ommission
on Monday night.
Lagging Christmas business in Astoria’s merchandise
marts came back to par this weekend with every indica-
tion that holiday shoppers are about to ﬁ nish the season
with the usual burst of enthusiasm.
All along Commercial Street, merchants report sales
up with lots of customers on hand to do their gift buy-
ing from stocks that are plentiful, compared with recent
war years.
U.S. Army engineers at F ort Stevens on
Tuesday evening recovered their second mine
from the wartime mine ﬁ eld in the Columbia.
The engineers were assigned the dangerous
and diﬃ cult task of cleaning up 18 remnants of
the mineﬁ eld, which had become sanded in and
misplaced.
The U.S. N avy will begin tomorrow morning mov-
ing 18 additional vessels, mostly LSTs, from the Kai-
ser-Vancouver shipyard site in Portland to Mott B asin at
Tongue Point.
The vessels are units of the inactive 19th ﬂ eet. The
N avy had a considerable number of these vessels laid
up at the Kaiser-Vancouver yard, but the M aritime C om-
mission needs that location for decommissioning its own
craft.