4A • June 1, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
Eat apple pie,
feel better
O
COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
The expansive gym at the Cannon Beach Elementary School currently sits unused.
School property comes
with a tribal heritage
F
or sale: Abandoned 1950s wood-
framed schoolhouse in tsunami
inundation zone. On former site
of historic Native American village;
centrally located, ocean views. Serious
offers only.
So might the ad for the former
Cannon Beach Elementary School read
when it goes on the market this year.
Former Seaside School District Su-
perintendent Doug Dougherty proposed
the school’s closing in 2013, attributed
to a $1.5 million budget shortfall.
Located 15 feet above sea level —
less than half the predicted 38-to-40-foot
wave height expected in even a small
tsunami, and more than a mile to high
ground — sealed the school’s fate.
A 2016 citywide survey showed 77
percent favored developing the former
elementary school into a community
center.
The Cannon Beach Chorus suggest-
ed a concert hall. The Haystack Rock
Awareness Program expressed interest in
an art and ecology center.
Other potential uses? Survey
respondents imagined fairs, festivals,
swap meets, a kayak launch or a beer
garden. While uses are limited by the
property’s institutional zoning to a mu-
seum, educational or cultural activity,
a conditional use permit could allow a
parking lot, restroom or dog impound
facility.
“Some may say, ‘Why would you
want to buy an old gym building?’”
Mayor Sam Steidel, a longtime propo-
nent of a city purchase of the property,
said in January. “It used to be a very
central part of the community. And it’s
the entrance to our town. People care
about that, and I think there’s been lots
of efforts by citizens to say so.”
Heritage site
The city’s 2017 Parks and Trails
Master Plan listed NeCus’ Park and
school site improvements a “high priori-
ty” to be accomplished within five years.
The park holds “great importance to the
community in terms of its locational,
historical, cultural and ecological value,”
the plan stated.
For no one more than the people who
lived here for centuries.
The former school sits on the former
site of NeCus’ village, a gathering
point for tribes and central location for
generations.
The Clatsops occupied “a unique piv-
ot-point on the region’s historical land-
scape,” author and research professor
Doug Deur, a tribal descendant, wrote in
the Oregon Historical Quarterly.
The Clatsop and their villages lined
the south bank of the Columbia River
estuary while the Chinooks and their
villages the north.
“From those homelands, these tribes
dominated social and economic life at
the mouth of the river through the early
Northwest fur-trade era, as they had for
countless generations prior,” Deur wrote.
David Stowe, a representative of the
Clatsop-Nehalem Federated Tribes, said
there remains a “ton of interest,” in the
former school.
“The site was one of our most
important village sites, and all of us on
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COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
Signs that students once occupied classrooms remain five years after the Can-
non Beach Elementary School shut down.
CANNON SHOTS
R.J. MARX
council and most of us in the tribe had
family members born there, lived there
and died there.”
The culture stretches 15,000 to
20,000 years for Indian settlement in
North America. “We say ‘time imme-
morial.’”
Stowe’s great-great-aunt and great-
great-uncle were the last two Indian
people to live there.
To say that the site has meaning for
the tribe is “an understatement,” he said.
Underground radar maps show un-
derground longhouses, pit-houses and a
trove of archaeological data remaining.
“One of the important things for us
is to not disturb that,” Stowe said. “We
hope that the integrity of the site will be
maintained and honored.”
While interested in providing input,
the tribe will not be among bidders.
“We had been trying to protect the
site for a long time, but the logistics are
challenging for a small group and we
thought this was really a little more than
we could take on,” Stowe said.
What would he like to see at the
school location?
“I’d love to see a longhouse, person-
ally.”
What it’s worth
In September 2016, the land at the
former school property was valued at
$450,000.
While most of the classrooms in the
1950s-era building would be unusable,
Coaster Construction contractor John
Nelson concluded the gym was in good
condition. The cost of interior and exte-
rior renovations, including a 25 percent
contingency, was estimated at $371,000.
The city and the school district were
unable to come to an agreement during
preliminary negotiations, and the project
shifted to the backburner.
For the school district, the elemen-
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CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
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9285
n Memorial Day, actual Memorial Day, I decided
to bake an apple pie. What’s more American
than apple pie, I thought, thinking of the patriot
holiday while standing in an aisle at Fresh Foods. I was
in Cannon Beach, having just come from the Memorial
Day observance on the Fir Street Bridge. I took what
I believe to be an amazing photo of the man who so
beautifully played taps.
My intention being to cook as little food as possible
(come the warmer months, I prefer to assemble, not
cook) I thought how to best use what’s already in the
house, which was a bag of apples. I’d bought the apples
(organic) the week before with the intention of eating
them all week for
lunch well
smeared with pea-
VIEW FROM
nut butter, but as
THE PORCH
it turned out Mr.
Sax, which is what EVE MARX
I call my husband,
kept bringing
home sushi from Safeway and sometimes their fried
chicken, and on the days when he didn’t bring in food, I
had yogurt. I’m partial to the Oui brand by Yoplait that
comes in a tiny glass jar. They call it French-style yogurt.
I call it dangerously addictive, but less dangerous than
gelato. I had at home brown sugar, cinnamon, butter,
and fancy sea salt. The only thing I didn’t have and
didn’t feel like making was a pie crust. Luckily Fresh
Foods carries the graham cracker and chocolate no-bake
Keebler brand, so dinner, or a major part of dinner, was
practically in the bag.
At Fresh Foods we also got a tin of Divina brand
dolmas, aka stuffed grape leaves. I scooped up a head
of hydroponically grown organic baby Bibb lettuce. Mr.
Sax got some Lily’s roasted garlic hummus and con-
sidered a jar of Jeff’s Naturals garlic stuffed olives, but
was advised we still had an unopened jar at home. My
Gearhart friends who mostly shop at Costco tease me
about our relatively bare cupboard and our commitment
to not “stock up.”
For years, Mr. Sax and I were guilty of being food
pack rats, keeping stores, but ever since we moved across
the country, we’ve decided to live lean and loose. This
is probably unwise should there be a disaster — natural
or otherwise — that makes it impossible to get to Fresh
Foods. The exception to this “no stocking up” rule is one
item only. There is always a bounty of dried prunes.
Now back to that apple pie. After checking out of the
store (the guy at the register is very droll) and driving
home and unloading our modest bag of groceries and
eating leftover (one day only) Safeway sushi, I tack-
led the pie. For people who insist on recipes, sorry,
there isn’t any. The process involves cutting six very
small organic apples into less-than-bite-size chunks;
placing these apples into a small bowl and adding a
half cup of brown sugar, several generous tablespoons
of full fat butter (lately I’m preferring unsalted Kerry
Gold), a dash of sea salt, several good shakes of good
ground cinnamon, and stir that up. Tip this filling into
the no-bake graham cracker crust crust and pouring
a generous amount of pure maple syrup over the top.
Cover the tin tightly with aluminum foil and pop into a
350-degree oven, the pie tin resting on a cookie pan. Go
do something else like write this column for 45 min-
utes. Open oven, remove aluminum foil cover, and bake
an additional 12 minutes. Remove from oven and allow
time to cool.
Enjoy apple pie for dinner even though it’s after
Memorial Day and moving into berry season and all the
apples are kind of old.
Eat apple pie. What could be more American?
DANNY MILLER/THE DAILY ASTORIAN
Carver of the welcome pole Guy Capo-
eman speaks during the 2016 dedica-
tion at NeCus’ Park in Cannon Beach.
tary school remains another piece in a
budding North Coast real estate port-
folio, along with Seaside High School,
Broadway Middle School and Gearhart
Elementary School.
In May, Sheila Roley, superintendent
of the Seaside School District, said
the district had received appraisals for
replacement value of the building and
property value if there were no building
on it.
A third appraisal will offer “what
would be a reasonable cost if you sold
the building as is,” Roley said.
“We’re happy to talk to the city
about any interest in the school,” she
added. “We haven’t had any recent
conversations, but we would love to
have that building as a Cannon Beach
community facility.”
Steidel remains committed to a pos-
sible acquisition, but said interest from
the City Council has waned.
“I’m the proponent, and I can’t
seem to get a council majority to be
forthcoming or proactive,” Steidel said.
“They keep saying it’s going to be too
expensive and has too many problems.
I don’t think they’re seeing the vision
that it could be.”
The mayor will have an ally in the
tribal council.
“We’re very much looking forward
to participating with the planning and
seeing how things develop there,”
Stowe said. “I have a feeling there can
be a good outcome for everybody there.
That would be awesome.”
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LETTERS
Please treat us fairly
Please grant us your permission
to restore our former views.
We don’t see what the city gains
by insisting that we lose.
From our deck we used to see
Haystack, beach and surf.
Now all we see is sky,
a wall of dune and turf.
What makes the top 10 feet of dune
so sacred it must stay?
What would the city lose?
We’re not asking it to pay.
Two of my three grandkids are
too small to climb the dune.
The extra height I carry them
cannot be cut too soon.
Please treat us like good neighbors,
which we believe we are.
Not like some nuisance nemesis
punished from afar.
I explained the situation
to my grandson who is six.
He said he didn’t think the problem
should be that hard to fix.
He said, “Tell the City Council
to think and do what’s fair.”
So, all I ask of Cannon Beach
is to treat us fair and square.
David Dornbusch
Oakland, California
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