Water under the bridge

Published 4:44 pm Monday, January 19, 2026

By Bob Duke

Compiled from the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers

10 years ago — 2016

WARRENTON – U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Astoria welcomed a yellow HM-60 Jayhawk helicopter Friday in celebration of 100 years of Coast Guard aviation.

The helicopter arrived from the Coast Guard’s aviation Logistics Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and will operate out of the Warrenton base for the next four years.

“We are honored to receive the first Jayhawk with a historic paint scheme and look forward to using it to continue the watch that our aviators so valiantly stand,” Capt. Daniel Travers, commander of Coast Guard’s Sector Columbia River, said in a release.

Financially, the Port of Astoria has much to celebrate, and much more work to do.

A recently released audit shows the Port improved its net financial position by more than $1 million between July 1, 2014, and June 30, the agency’s most recent complete fiscal year.

“We’re seeing some positive trends here at the Port,” said accountant Jim Lanzarotta from Moss Adams LLP, hired by the port Commission’s Tuesday meeting

WARRENTON – The F1shSt1ckz, Warrenton Grade School’s Lego robotics team, won first place for their project at the FIRST Lego League state championship tournament Jan. 10.

The team won the Google Data Center Research Award, which recognizes a team that utilizes diverse resources to formulate an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the problem they have identified.

The first Lego League challenges students to tackle a different real-world problem each year, using both Lego robotics  and teamwork. About 60 teams from around the state competed Jan. 10 at Liberty High School in Hillsboro.

F1shSt1ckz is comprised of students from the fourth through seventh grades, including Dwayne Wallace, Levi Cabalona-Qualin, Evan Lakey, Connor Moha, Evan Agustin, Nikia Farrow, Zander Moha, Annie Heyen and Marlie Annat.

Ports in the Northwest are waiting to see if the nation’s budget will include funding for small ports that often struggle to obtain federal dollars.

The Northwestern congressional delegation advocated that the president’s fiscal year 2017 budget set aside roughly $48million to maintain jetties and the channels leading to small ports. The funding would include Pacific County’s Port of Ilwaco and Port of Chinook.

The Port of Astoria has tried surveying tape, beach balls, electrified mats and fake orcas to scare away sea lions. Why not inflatable air dancers? 

The Port Commission has approved buying two air dancers to act like dockside scarecrows in the agency’s latest endeavor to shoo sea lions out of the East End Mooring Basin.

The suggestion came from Port Commissioner James Campbell, who said the “bogeymen” had successfully scared away sea lions in California. A staple at car dealerships, bargain stores, halftime shows and concerts, the nylon, tube-shaped caricatures flail around the sky as they fill with air.

50 years ago — 1976

Two Astoria men announced a plan Tuesday they hope will breathe new life into the city’s crumbling waterfront.

Restaurateur Darrel Davis and contractor George Brugh plan to take an abandoned warehouse on pilings and convert it into a restaurant-lounge surrounded by small shops.

Aside from painting, repairing and cutting new windows in the metal-sided building between Tenth and Eleventh streets, they intend to retain as much of the waterfront flavor as possible.

“I like the authentic, cannery row look,” says Davis, owner of the Brass Rail Restaurant (formerly Thiel’s) which he recently remodeled.

Landowners and sports fishermen in Clatsop County are organizing into a single group to protect the rights of each other and dissuade unruly outsiders from using North Coast fishing streams.

The unnamed group held its first meeting at 665 Grand in Astoria and agreed that the image of sports fishermen must be improved.

Persons attending said the number of fishable streams in Clatsop County has diminished in recent years because some fishermen – mostly from areas outside Clatsop County – disregard the rights of the landowners.

They said unruly and rude fishermen commit vandalous acts and give local fishermen a “black eye.”

“I grew up in a rough neighborhood. My neighborhood was so rough…”

Everyone has heard comedians talk about how rough their neighborhood was.

But to some residents of Astoria’s east end, particularly in the Thirty-eighth Street valley, “rough neighborhood” talk isn’t a joke.

They are the residents whose homes repeatedly suffer damage from petty vandalism, only a small part of which ever appears on police records.

It isn’t only vandalism that disturbs Thirty-eighth Street area residents. There are also roaring motorcycles and roving bands of noisy, profane youngsters sometimes hurling epithets, eggs and rocks. 

Three families who live in an undeveloped area off the east end of Irving Avenue in Astoria are paying the price of seclusion with the inconvenience of dealing with an access road that is sinking ominously.

There’s also another matter beside inconvenience – they may have little protection if a fire breaks out in their homes.

The informal position of the City of Astoria at this time is that large fire trucks won’t be taken across the long access road that begins at 38th and Irving, even though only 20 to 30 feet is sinking.

Spokesmen for the three families appealed to city councilmen for the second time Monday to do something about the slumping road.

A design for developing mini-parks on the Astoria waterfront between the Port of Astoria docks and Nineteenth Street won approval by the Astoria Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

75 years ago — 1951

1950 caption – County workmen completed the job Wednesday of replacing the log supports of the roof covering the giant Douglas fir log on the Clatsop County courthouse grounds. The old logs had rotted away at their bases.

Fourteen of the 16 Clatsop County citizens present at the Clatsop County forum last night voted unanimously to continue efforts toward rehabilitation and eventual use of the old Flavel mansion as a museum and library.

Kermit Gimre, moderator, opened the meeting with statements which quoted the Clatsop County court and Judge Boyington as condemning the building itself as unsafe for any kind of public use.

Gimre also declared that local architect, John Wicks had declared the building in its present condition as unsafe, He also said that Wicks had estimated the minimum cost for proper rehabilitation and restoration would cost approximately $75,000. This remodeling would include complete restoration from basement to cupola.

But as Leone Mann interpolated, we had yet to “see a satisfactory public museum or library built around a cupola.” Mrs. Lindstrom then facetiously suggested that if the building were to be razed the idea would be to “turn it over to the teen-agers and in no time it would be literally shaken from its foundations.”

After these exchanges, the forum settled down to business and Mrs. Frank Fowler, who was representing the Veterans Memorial library committee, declared that insofar as she was concerned she thought the historical ramifications of the Flavel home were so far-reaching that the eventual restoration of the building was justified.

To Mrs. Al Mittet, the March of Dimes is the most wonderful, miraculous idea this country of ours ever thought up.

Those were just about her words, and then she stopped, and her eyes that have the twinkle of a happy, young bride’s took on an added sparkle from the tears of gratitude, and she said, “There just aren’t words enough to let me say how very important the work done by the March of Dimes is.”

Louise is in a position to say this. She knows first-hand. For she is a victim of Poliomylities, and it is due to the care and treatments of the polio foundation, financed by the March of Dimes, that Louise is a happy and active housewife today.

The Astoria port terminals have been having a busy month handling exports of wheat and flour, according to Port Manager J.R. Fowler.

He reported bulk wheat exports totaling 21,500 tons have been taken by four ships since late December, all but one cargo going to the Orient and one going to Europe.

There have also been flour exports totaling about 5000 tons so far this month with another 2500 tons scheduled for export from the Pillsbury mill before February 1.

A step-up in overhaul of ships in the reserve fleet at Tongue Point is anticipated for the near future in a bill providing funds for such work, navy officials said today.

The navy spokesman said Tongue Point has received no official confirmation as to the amount of new work planned.