1950 — Piles of snow were being scooped from Commercial Street, but following a southeast storm, the street was turned into a sea of slush, rutted like a country road.

10 years ago this week — 2015

Kathleen Saadat, who is Black, a woman and a lesbian, challenged a mostly white audience at Clatsop Community College Friday afternoon with a straightforward, yet uncomfortable, question: In a nation where everyone is supposed to be equal under the law, why is it that some have to fight for their rights?

The Portland equal-rights activist, who appeared in Astoria for events marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day, did not provide an easy answer.

Her message is that discussions about race, gender and sexual orientation are inherently complex and dependent on a willingness to speak honestly with one another about personal biases and about the nation’s painful history of discrimination.

“I’m not sure you can get through this without having your feelings hurt,” she said. “And if you want it all to be nice, go to a movie … ”

The smelt are back in the Columbia River — and so are the sea lions trying to eat them.

And the Port of Astoria is once again providing a resting place for hundreds, if not thousands, of sea lions at the East End Mooring Basin.

The only thing staff has done is to protect the Port’s property and get the sea lions off the docks, said executive director Jim Knight during a meeting Tuesday. He estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 sea lions head Astoria’s way for fishing season.

WESTPORT — Georgia-Pacific Wauna Mill’s decade-long process to donate 27 acres of unused, waterfront land to Clatsop County for the creation of a community park came to a close Friday.

Wauna Mill and county officials gathered at the mill Friday for a brief celebration to recognize the successful land donation, valued at $230,000, that opens the door for a new Westport park.

LONG BEACH, Wash. — As student enrollment continues to go up at Long Beach Elementary, the Ocean Beach School District is confronting overcrowding issues long before expected.

“It’s becoming a bigger priority than it was before,” said Superintendent Jenny Risner. “Because they’ve continued to increase enrollment throughout the year, it’s forced us to look at it a little earlier than we anticipated to still stay ahead of the curve.”

SEASIDE — What three friends discovered while metal detecting in the dunes last November is indeed a shipwreck.

Now the question is: which one?

“We have over 2,000 wrecks at the mouth of the Columbia (River),” said Oregon’s state archaeologist Dennis Griffin. “So it’s interesting if we can figure out what wreck this is because we don’t have it on record.”

In hopes of recovering the ship’s identity, Griffin traveled to the site near Avenue L Jan. 13 and took two wood samples from the boat’s 21-foot keel, then sent them to Eugene for testing. The results, expected in a few weeks, will determine the type of lumber used in construction and, in turn, narrow the ship’s potential points of origin.

50 years ago — 1975

Port of Umatilla commissioners voted Monday to make an all-out effort to attract the proposed AMAX aluminum plant site from Warrenton to the port’s industrial park near Hermiston.

Also Monday, Don Hodel, administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration, said the agency wouldn’t try to block switching the AMAX site from Warrenton to eastern Oregon.

Meanwhile, an AMAX official said the company still prefers to build its aluminum plant in Warrenton and is making plans to present a strong case to the Environmental Quality Commission at a hearing Feb. 7 in Portland.

The Warrenton City Commission and Astoria City Council adopted resolutions Monday generally supporting AMAX.

The Astoria City Council came out Monday against the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission’s proposal to designate the Youngs Bay area as an area of environmental concern and accused the commission of acting arbitrarily.

The viewpoint was adopted unanimously in a resolution which didn’t refer specifically to the AMAX aluminum plant proposed for Warrenton, though that plant is central to the current controversy over the Youngs Bay estuarine area.

“It’s pretty tough if you can’t get around,” said one Clatsop County senior citizen. And that, in a nutshell, says it all.

Transportation for the elderly in Clatsop County is in what some would call a “limbo” stage.

There are a few programs operating which benefit a few senior citizens, but there is no comprehensive project which serves most of the county’s elderly.

And there are several people talking about getting something done but none of these projects has progressed past the discussion stages.

SALEM — The Oregon Transportation Commission designated today the first segment of a recreational trail that will extend along the coast from the Columbia River to California.

The 62-mile segment is from the Columbia River to Tillamook Bay at Barview.

It includes 34 miles on the beach, 20 on trails, nearly 6 on roads and streets, and 2 miles along the Oregon Coast Highway.

Another bit of lower Columbia River history began to crumble Jan. 7 when the east end of the old Scandinavian cannery building in Alderbrook caved in during a blustery windstorm.

It is hard to find somebody around who knows the history of the Scandinavian Packing Co. cannery because it was built before even some old-timers were born.

75 years ago — 1950

One of the worst blizzards ever to strike Clatsop County left residents shoveling snow from sidewalks and rooftops and digging their cars out of drifts up to 6 feet deep Saturday morning.

City streets, county roads and state highways generally were passable and traffic was “getting through,” but chains were necessary on both the Sunset and Columbia River highways.

Astorians — those who tried to use their cars at all — found it almost impossible to climb local hills without chains.

“Continued cold” was the forecast. A southwest storm expected Friday failed to live up to the local reputation of southwesters, and warnings were lowered at 8 a.m. Saturday.

Rural mail delivery out of the Astoria post office resumed today, with carriers departing this morning on all four routes.

One rural carrier, Bob Taylor, got out yesterday before deliveries were canceled. He managed to get half his route delivered before getting stuck in a snowbank at Brownsmead, where he spent four hours digging his car out.

“No break in the cold” for another four days was the official weather forecast Monday as Astoria and Seaside city schools reopened, county schools generally remained closed, traffic crawled and skidded and homeowners continued shoveling.

State highways were “not very good.” The Mist-Clatskanie road had a record 90 inches of snow, state highway officials said. Tire chains were necessary for all travel.

Though buffeted and chilled, Astoria had not yet experienced the legendary “ill wind” which blows no good. The blizzard had brought employment for men who needed it badly.

“Unemployed men have been getting the word about the need for snow shovelers,” Guy Barker, manager of the state employment agency here, said Monday.

“We sent out 18 men by 10:30 this morning and others are standing by, waiting for calls. Finding shovels is something of a problem, but the men are getting from $1 an hour up – usually $1.50 – for clearing rooftops and sidewalks, and $2 an hour at night.”

The City Commission heard a gloomy description Monday night of what can happen here if a sudden thaw melts the snow blanket over the city quickly.

The possibility of clogged and broken hillside sewers sending torrents down the streets, of downtown streets filled from curb to curb with slush and water and perhaps overflowing on sidewalks to leak through trap doors into basements, of slides of water-soaked earth on the hillsides, was discussed by the commission with H. M. McCallister, city street superintendent.

No streets have been officially set aside for sledding purposes, city officials said today, but several have been marked with fire “bombs” to warn traffic that they are in use.

The marked streets include 17th Street from Jerome Avenue to Commercial Street, Franklin Avenue from 40th Street to Hauke’s store, at 33rd and 34th.

Much sledding is being done on hill streets all over the city, and sleds are hard to see at night against the snow background.