10 years ago this week — 2014

The 200th anniversary of Jane Barnes’ arrival in Astoria was celebrated in crazy fashion as men slipped on pantyhose, garters, slinky dresses, spotted boas, wild wigs, outrageous makeup and slithered down a lighted catwalk into a sold-out Astor Street Opry Co. playhouse Saturday night.

Barnes was the first white woman to arrive by ship from England in the Fort George enclave (now Astoria) filled with “49 male clerks and indentured servants and a handful of Indian women and children,” wrote Amy Hoffman Couture in “Astorians’ Eccentric and Extraordinary.”

People love sea lions. The pinnipeds on Pier 39 have brought crowds from around the world to watch them and doubled attendance at often barren Port of Astoria meetings.

They were ready Tuesday, when Commissioner Bill Hunsinger, also a commercial fisherman, asked what the Port was doing to protect its property.

“We have three or four times as many of them on the floats as we did last year,” said Hunsinger, of the mostly California sea lions packing the docks at Astoria’s East Mooring Basin.

Outside the breeding season, male California sea lions migrate north to feed, and many expect a record salmon season this year on the Columbia River.

The Port seeks a way to segregate the sea lions from tenants and to stop them from damaging property. Sea lion supporters want the Port to embrace the mammals, find grants to help pay for a viewing area and support a tourist draw.

Most people can’t see them hidden in the small marina on the Washington side of the Columbia River. But the small boats of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Station Cape Disappointment are quick to speed out of Baker Bay to pluck the unfortunate from the mouth of the Columbia River.

And now they can do so a little bit faster.

Station Cape Disappointment in February received two new 29-foot, Freedom-class response boats — small vessels, as they’re known in the U.S. Coast Guard’s lexicon, to replace their 10-year-old Defender-class predecessors.

“Its key factor in search and rescue is its speed,” said Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class Nicholas Palisano, one of the crew of the new response boats and their larger brethren, the 47-foot motor lifeboats, that Cape Disappointment is known for. “It doesn’t have the equipment or the outfit of the motor lifeboat, but it can get somewhere about twice as fast, which is good in the summertime.”

With 29 confirmed deaths in the catastrophic mudslide in Oso, Washington, city officials are again looking at the topography of Astoria and the danger landslides could present.

In fact, more than half of the city is susceptible to landslides, a report from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries concluded last year.

“Astoria has a long history of slides,” Mayor Willis Van Dusen said. “As long as I can remember — and I’ve lived here my whole life — there has been concern about landslides in Astoria. We have some that are ancient landslides so we have to be careful with the topography here.

“We haven’t had any loss of life in Astoria due to landslides and we’re lucky that that hasn’t happened. But naturally, I thought of Astoria when I saw the one in Washington.”

50 years ago — 1974

Clatsop County employees voted 70-15 Friday to become a part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The vote means unionization of the courthouse is all but completed.

Longshoremen continued to work Monday night under the lights at the Port of Astoria, loading logs from the water. Assistant Port Manager Ray Holbrook said Monday’s loading was as successful as Saturday and Sunday night’s shifts, despite the rain.

The crew of a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter from Astoria spotted a Liberian tanker allegedly pumping oil into the Pacific Ocean about 35 miles off Hoquiam, Washington, on Monday, in violation of an international treaty.

The crew photographed a 14-mile-long by 100-foot-wide oil slick as evidence to be turned over to the U.S. State Department, according to Lt. Michael Leeds, copilot on the flight.

A Democratic candidate for State Rep. George Cole’s House seat said he is worried that a proposed Japanese-owned coal handling facility at Warrenton will steal jobs from American workers.

Meanwhile, Port Manager George Grove is cautioning Clatsop County residents not to expect the coal handling facility to be built in the immediate future. He says no firm plans have been drawn and no binding contracts signed.

The Astoria City Council decided Monday to proceed with plans for widening of Florence Avenue, despite objections by some of the residents of the neighborhood.

The decision came after the second session of public commentary on the proposed widening between Marine Drive and Antwerp Street. A hearing which began March 18 had been continued until Monday for review of the assessment plan by the city staff.

After that review, the staff reaffirmed its earlier method of assessing residents for their share of the project’s cost, which is slightly less than 10%.

SEASIDE — Seaside businessmen may obtain a shoplifter for their stores just by calling the city police department.

The department’s resident shoplifter is Community Liason Officer Jim Willingham, who will come over to test their store to see how shoplifter-proof they are.

Chances are he will have a few suggestions on how they can better prevent shoplifters who steal an estimated $70,000 a day from Oregon stores.

ILWACO, Wash. — Archaeologists must work rapidly to salvage what they can before historic sites are obliterated or picked over by amateur artifact collectors, a noted archaeologist said in Ilwaco, Washington, Tuesday.

Dr. Richard Daugherty, of Washington State University, said historic sites are being destroyed faster than archaeologists can excavate them.

“There aren’t enough archaeologists, so we are spreading ourselves thin to save what we can,” he said.

75 years ago — 1949

Monday will be the 100th anniversary of the founding in Astoria of the first customs house on the West Coast.

On April 4, 1849, the brig Valadora crossed the bar of the Columbia River. The Valadora became the first vessel to register formally at U.S. customs on the West Coast because it carried as a passenger John Adair, who had been appointed collector of customs at the Astoria port several months before by President James Polk.

Adair arrived aboard the Valadora with his family, which he was moving from Kentucky to Astoria. As his first official act, he registered the Valadora into the port.

The Astoria customs office which Adair established was not only the first customs house on the West Coast, but it was the first federal building, except post offices, set up west of the Rocky Mountains.

Somebody overslept and radio station KAST was off the air for over an hour one morning this week — and it cost a listener of the station $11.45. A man who didn’t identify himself called the station the next day complaining about it being off the air. He was indignant.

“I thought my radio was on the blink when I didn’t hear your station on the air. So I took the set to a radio repairman here and he charged me $11.45 to fix it,” the irate listener complained.

The Clatsop County Health Department has directed the Astoria City Council to correct unsanitary conditions caused by sewer outfalls at two places in the east end of the city, it was disclosed at Monday night’s City Council meeting.

One is at the foot of 38th Street, where a sewer discharges into a pool behind the new Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway railway fill across the Uppertown waterfront.

The other is around the foot of 53rd Street, where several sewers from private residences discharge directly upon the riverfront.

The roof caught fire, the back porch fell off and the chimney sweep fell to the ground.

These occurrences climaxed the Monday attempt of Melvin Knutsen, a Portland chimney sweep, to clean out the flue of an apartment house.

The chimney sweep, who uses chemicals to burn out flues thickened with creosote, began to have trouble shortly before noon Monday. Sparks from the chimney set the roof afire in several places.

While struggling to leave the roof, Knudsen dislodged the back porch. The porch broke away from the house and fell. So did Knudsen.

Knudsen suffered only minor injuries, however.

Sen. Harry P. Cain is trying to get a $12 million item for Ice Harbor Dam on Snake River back into the Army civil functions bill from which a House Appropriations subcommittee eliminated it.

Washington press dispatches Thursday said Sen. Cain has asked the Senate Appropriations committee, which is now considering the House-passed bill, to restore the item.

Fishing industry spokesmen here, who were instrumental in getting the $12 million item knocked out in the House subcommittee, said they will fight Sen. Cain’s plans.