10 years ago this week — 2015

SEASIDE — Between all the whereas and therefores in the state, House Bill 3042 is the imagination of an eighth grader at Broadway Middle School.

Hayley Rollins, 13, who paints, draws portraits and experiments with anime, is the inspiration for the bill by state Rep. Deborah Boone to designate an Honorary Artists of Oregon Day.

The bill asserts that art should not be an elective in Oregon schools, but a necessity, and that students should be encouraged to take art classes from preschool to college.

A day to celebrate art, the bill says, would give Oregonians an opportunity to explore personal expression or learn about art history.

“It’s what I’m hoping,” Rollins said.

At the Port of Astoria’s boatyard on Pier 3, hemmed in to the north and west by stored logs and the south by trucks taking them to Pier 1 for export, boat owners are thankful for the good weather but unsure how long they’ll have to work on their vessels.

They and other Port tenants wonder about the impending closure of the 11-year-old boatyard by April 1, which port Executive Director Jim Knight described as an arbitrary date in the Port’s effort to stem the flow of copper from a known source.

But to many, the sudden closure puts boat owners in a bind. It exemplifies how the Port’s most recent strategic plans, which envisioned a marine services center of Pier 3 anchored by a modern boatyard, haven’t been followed or funded. And it seems a convenient excuse to make more room for logs, opponents think.

CANNON BEACH — The Oregon Department of Transportation cut down and hauled away about 55 trees from U.S. Highway 101, between Cannon Beach’s north entrance and Sunset Boulevard, on Monday.

Most of these trees had begun to lean perilously over the highway and, the department argued, may pose a threat to drivers.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alert returned to its homeport in Astoria Sunday after a two-month assignment in Central and South America that included the interception of two smuggling boats and seizure of 2,300 pounds of cocaine valued at $28 million.

Along with the narcotics patrol, the Alert twice freed sea turtles caught in abandoned fishing gear and held exercises in shipboard emergency response, navigation proficiency and live-fire gunnery, according to a statement from the Coast Guard.

“It is truly amazing to see a 46-year-old cutter still maintain superior performance and capability,” Ensign John Locke, the Alert’s weapons officer, said in a statement. “Ultimately, it is the crew that makes any mission possible in a very dynamic global environment.”

The Astoria Parks and Recreation Board could recommend a dog park at John Warren Field after the idea received a positive reaction at a town hall meeting at City Hall Tuesday night.

The city would lease the 1.4-acre former home of the Astoria High School Fishermen from Columbia Memorial Hospital until the hospital decides on future development.

50 years ago — 1975

PORTLAND — The Astoria Junior High School chess team returned laden with honors Sunday night from the annual state chess tournament, sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

The four-boy team won first place in the junior high division over a field of 18 teams, while two of its members, Ted Leong And Craig Johnson, took first and second place, respectively, in the eighth grade individual competition.

The 150 competitors in the OMSI tournament finals held in Portland over the weekend were survivors of some 4,000 young chess players who competed in regional tournaments the previous weekend in 18 districts across the state.

SEASIDE — Everyone at the scene of the car fire Friday got gassed.

Everyone, including policemen, firemen and bystanders, after two Seaside policemen attempted to extinguish the small fire with what they thought was a fire extinguisher.

The red metal canister turned out to be a 5-pound tear gas dispenser.

As a result, what began as a routine fire call turned into quite a teary affair. To make matters worse, police couldn’t turn off the tear gas.

The tear gas canister was in the trunk of the police car and apparently looked exactly like a fire extinguisher, with the same color, size, handle and gauge on top.

Seaside Fire Chief Floyd Pittard said the canister was marked and tagged as a fire extinguisher.

Police were the first at the fire scene and grabbed the canister to put the fire out immediately.

“I didn’t even know we had them,” Police Chief John West said of the tear gas, adding a quick check of other police cars revealed no more misplaced tear gas canisters.

The crude wooden anchor snagged in a gillnet last week by fisherman Nick Marincovich may have been the anchor of Black Saul’s peculiar river ferry, the Calipoola, about 125 years ago.

That’s the theory of Astorian Roger Tetlow, who recognized the odd-looking anchor as matching the description of the mysterious boatman’s strange craft.

Saul, whose real name was James D. Saules, remained in Astoria and made his living ferrying people and cargo across the Columbia near the river mouth.

His craft was an odd one even by the standards of that day, with a rig that was a “cross between a Chinese Junk and a fore and aft schooner.” Tetlow said.

“The nautical item that caught most of the passengers’ eyes was her anchor,” Tetlow added.

“Saul had made it out of a tree, cutting the trunk off just above a point where four limbs came out, he carved the points sharp, whittled the trunk down. He also lashed a large stone to the bottom of the anchor to help it sink.”

The winter gillnet season ended today with a total Chinook salmon run expected to be less than 7,000 fish when the final figures are in.

That would be the lowest catch in at least five years, according to Oregon Fish Commission Biologist Burnell.

The sunshine and warm weather that appeared locally last week was a welcome sight to a group of enthusiastic young men from MacLaren School for Boys working at Camp Rilea.

The boys were clearing underbrush in a pine forest area of the camp as part of a two-day work project arranged with Camp Rilea officials.

The mounds of dead leaves, twigs, grasses and earth compost will be used as mulch in a countywide community garden project.

75 years ago — 1950

Salmon production by Columbia River operators in 1949 slumped to the third lowest point in the history of the industry. The pack of 17,122 cases was “closely in line with 1943-44-45; and the frequent recurrence of such failures is a source of growing alarm.”

The figures and comment were reported by the Pacific Fisherman yearbook for 1950, a 352-page volume crammed with statistics, summaries, comparative reviews and photographs concerning the fishing industry of the U.S. and, in many cases, the world.

The total salmon pack, which included Chinook, blueback, silverside, chum, keta and steelhead trout, was 119,212 cases below the 62-year average of 292,334 cases. The value of $4,739,000, however, was higher than the value of the packs at any time during the 1930s, 1921 or any year prior to 1917.

The first step toward the formation of a community college to provide fishermen college work was taken Tuesday night by the Astoria school board.

James Burgess, city superintendent of schools, was authorized to ask the state system of higher education for permission to establish a lower Columbia city college here.

Burgess requested the permission of the board to take the action after trial schools at Bend and Klamath Falls had proved a success, he said.

The schools, authorized by the 1949 legislature, offer a complete year of freshman college work pointed at giving high school graduates unable to leave their homes because of expense or other reasons to attend college, a taste of college education and reduce the number of years they would have to leave home to gain the college degree.

The U.S. Coast Guard, an outfit which probably investigates more miscellaneous mysteries than anyone else except city police, Monday night dutifully solved a problem.

At 8:30 p.m., the lookout at the Cape Disappointment lifeguard station saw the sky slashed by a flare between Seaside and Point Adams.

Another white light rocketed into the air — and another — 11 in all. From the lookout tower, their source appeared to be the beach itself, where many a mariner has run aground, or slightly inland where an airplane might crash.

The Coast Guard swung into action.

A jeep full of Coast Guardsmen from Point Adams determined in a matter of minutes that no boat was aground. The flares were being fired from a point about a half-mile inland.

Shortly afterward, the jeep returned to Point Adams and an officer filled out a report. The flares continued, but the lookout turned watchful eyes elsewhere.

The Coast Guard said the National Guard had every right to conduct training exercises at Camp Clatsop.

Clatsop County residents got a taste of all kinds of weather Friday, and awoke this morning to find ice-covered streets on higher points in the city as the weatherman played tricks during the past 24 hours.