A sign along the Row River bike trail, noting a film location from the movie Stand By Me.

Long before The Goonies, there was The General, one of the first major motion pictures filmed in Oregon.

The 1926 silent film starred Buster Keaton, and was shot on location in and around Cottage Grove. When it comes to famous movies, Cottage Grove is the Astoria of the Willamette Valley.

Astorian reporter Gary Henley made the trek to Cottage Grove recently, and bicycled into the city to photograph some of the locations where The General was filmed, and also where Keaton and the crew were housed during their stay, at the Bartell (now Cottage Grove) Hotel, currently undergoing a renovation.

A giant mural of Keaton is on one side of the building, depicting a scene from The General.

Keaton spent nearly a month in Cottage Grove, where he and his crew helped fight a brush fire outside the city during their stay. And he and his team also played baseball — one of Keaton’s favorite activities — at Kelly Field, at the corner of 12th and Quincy Avenues.

Directed by Clyde Bruckman and Keaton, The General co-starred Marion Mack, and was inspired by a book titled “The Great Locomotive Chase,” a true story of an event that occurred during the Civil War.

The United Artists movie (which is in the public domain and can be seen on YouTube) was not well received by critics and audiences, resulting in mediocre box office returns, but is now ranked among the greatest American films ever made.

In 1963, Keaton was quoted, “I was more proud of that picture than any I ever made.”

Many of the railroad lines shown in The General and the movie Stand By Me (1986) are now part of the “Row River Trail” system, a 14-mile paved bike route that follows the route of the now-abandoned Oregon Pacific & Eastern Railroad line. Several film locations can still be found using notable landmarks.

Another part of the Row River trail takes riders on a loop around Dorena Reservoir, where movies such as Emperor of the North (1973) and Stand By Me were filmed. The parade scene in Animal House was filmed in downtown Cottage Grove.

One link between the movies filmed in Cottage Grove and Astoria is Corey Feldman — then a child actor who appears in both The Goonies (1985) and Stand By Me.