10 years ago this week — 2014

A steady stream of visitors are taking a new, yet old, means of transportation to Astoria this year.

After being out of commission for five years, a 223-passenger paddle wheeler is plying the Columbia River waters again and will have docked in Astoria 31 times by November.

Passengers onboard the American Empress take nine-day trips between Vancouver and Clarkston, Washington, and stop in Astoria for a lower river port call next to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. Its first voyage began in April after a dedication ceremony in Portland.

As promised by chairwoman Katrina Ivanoff during the opening for the 2014 Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival, there wasn’t a single lutefisk to be reckoned with within 500 miles of the Clatsop County Fairgrounds all weekend — just a sweet Scandinavian celebration Friday through Sunday.

The events were all about appreciating and feeling better in touch with Scandinavian culture.

“We hope that our festival helps you connect with your heritage, remember your past, celebrate it in the present and hold onto it and let it merge into your future,” Ivanoff said.

CANNON BEACH — The 50th Sandcastle Contest attracted several thousand visitors to the ordinarily quiet shores of Cannon Beach Saturday.

Massive crowds swarmed around the beaches west of downtown to witness more than 50 teams of sand sculptors build giant, meticulously detailed works of sand art that were as breathtaking as they were fleeting.

The eight-member Sand Master team toiled an hour longer than the rest, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Armed with shovels, buckets, rakes, chisels and lots of seawater, they slowly transformed the amorphous piles of sand within their plots into carefully crafted showpieces — all of which were reclaimed by the tides at sunset.

JEWELL — The sprawling, 80-acre campus at Jewell School transformed recently into an all-inclusive training ground for one of the region’s only organized ground search teams.

This year’s Search and Rescue Training Academy, organized by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and held at Jewell School and on Tillamook Spit, drew 27 recruits, 14 to 21 years old, seeking to join Explorer Post 877. They’ve been running around Jewell the past week and a half, clad in white bucket helmets, uniform T-shirts and standard-issue backpack water bladders, learning how to survive and search outdoors.

“We activate them in searches when we need searchers,” said Sgt. Dan Cardinal, an Explorer in the 1980s and now the coordinator of the academy for the sheriff’s office. He estimated the Explorers performed 20 searches last year alone.

From the Astoria Riverwalk south, the city’s Planning Commission approved the Civic Greenway phase of the Riverfront Vision Plan Tuesday night after a 4.5-hour meeting.

That part of the plan includes design review standards for structures built from 16th Street to 41st Street, and a proposed affordable housing complex near 30th Street.

50 years ago — 1974

They gave a Clam Festival, but the clams didn’t come.

Little clamdiggers with big shovels crowded the beach at Seaside Saturday, hoping one of the lowest tides of the year would uncover lots of bivalves. Though few went home with full gunnysacks, many went home with full stomachs and fond memories of the chowder feed at the convention center.

Port of Astoria manager George Grove has said many times the Port is on the threshold of blossoming into a world seaport.

However, the Port budget committee said last week the Port also may be on the brink of bankruptcy if it tries to expand too quickly in the face of a sagging log export market, the Port’s bread-and-butter commodity.

Grove told the budget committee the only way for the Port to get out of the doldrums is to hire additional personnel and to work to diversify cargoes shipped through Astoria.

Budget committee members agreed diversification is needed, but they said the uncertain economic times ahead call for immediate belt-tightening, not staff expansion.

It is rare when discussions that slice to the heart of a public agency’s problems occur.

It is even more rare when they occur in the framework of a budget committee session, even though that is the logical place for them to happen because where the money goes now determines policy later.

If those in the seafood industry in Astoria had to depend on the Columbia River fishing seasons this year, they would go broke.

Fortunately, large numbers of the Astoria area workforce, whose business is fish, have other than the Columbia River salmon to keep their paychecks coming in.

But what about the full-time commercial fisherman who gillnets on the Columbia?

Since the first of this year, he has had only 10 days of fishing allowed by the Oregon and Washington state fishery agencies and, for the first time ever, he didn’t get even a Columbia River shad season.

It’s difficult to imagine how things were in late 1805 when Lewis and Clark camped at the mouth of the Columbia River, the terminus of their epic exploratory expedition, and decided to winter here before heading back.

The park ranger today at Fort Clatsop National Memorial, which contains an actual-size replica of the fort which Lewis and Clark built, are doing all they can to help out people’s imaginations.

Fort Clatsop has a living history program which includes park rangers dressing up in handmade buckskins and coonskin hats and demonstrating all of the skills Lewis and Clark and their men needed to survive on the journey.

The living history program isn’t knew this year, but it does have a new touch that has sparked considerable interest. The new touch is Marcia Putman, 22, who poses as Sacagawea, the Indian woman who accompanied Lewis and Clark on the expedition.

Miss Putman, who grew up in Astoria, is a natural for the job because she is a descendant from Chief Comcomly, the wily, one-eyed chieftain of the Chinook Indians who greeted Lewis and Clark when they arrived here.

75 years ago — 1949

At least two persons drowned and 30 others were rescued Sunday as squally weather tossed scores of light craft along the Oregon and Washington state coast, capsizing one and swamping others.

Seven disabled vessels, including three fishing boats, were towed to safe anchorages.

The City Council Monday night reluctantly abandoned hope of converting the Astoria naval hospital property into housing, then listened to an urgent appeal from the Coast Guard to help provide adequate, low-rental housing for Coast Guard personnel.

The council told Lt. Frank Schmitz, skipper of the cutter Balsam, who presented the Coast Guard housing problem, that the situation would be surveyed to determine if the commission can help provide relief.

Lt. Schmitz declared that 125 families of Coast Guard enlisted personnel need housing.

PORTLAND — A British steamer is scheduled to call at Astoria July 5 for 35,000 cases of canned salmon purchase by the British government, it was announced here today.

Burchard and Fisken Inc., shipping agents, said the Pacific Nomad will call for the shipment of 1948 August pack salmon. It will be the largest reported movement of canned fish from the Columbia River since 1939.

The 36-foot-troller Midnight, out of Astoria, was reported missing today by the Point Adams Coast Guard Station, bringing to two the number of boats now being sought by Coast Guardsmen along the coast here.

The patrol plane operated by the Coast Guard was scheduled today to search for the Midnight and the troller Rainadene, reported missing Tuesday.

No sign of the Rainadene was seen by the plane in searches yesterday and Tuesday.

The state Highway Commission ferry M.R. Chessman ran aground on a sandbar near the bell buoy in the Columbia River on its 6:30 a.m. run to Megler this morning, ferry officials said today.

Spokesmen said the Chessman was on its usual course when it struck the sandbar. The ferry was stalled for about and hour before it was pulled free by another ferry, the Tourist II.

No damage was reported to the Chessman and it was back on its scheduled runs later in the morning.

A minus 6-foot tide was recorded for Astoria this morning at 6:22 and the ferry was caught on the sand at the change of tides.

The troller Rainadene with Walter Kannoned, Ilwaco, aboard was picked up by the fish boat Eirs out of Newport about 10 miles offshore from Depoe Bay, the local Coast Guard reported today.

Klondike Kate, a smiling, lively lady of perhaps 70 summers, dropped a dollar through the floor of the dressing room at Astoria’s old opera house many years ago, she recalled Friday at the chamber of commerce luncheon where she spoke briefly.

Dollars were silver in those days, so the one she lost did not float on the Columbia River waters swirling underneath the opera house, but vanished in the dark depths.

Kate, now Mrs. Rockwell Van Duran, asked if anyone ever found the dollar.

President E.L. Paldanius of the chamber of commerce said that in those days he was a boy who sometimes rowed a boat underneath the downtown district, looking for discarded junk from the buildings above.

“Maybe we found that dollar,” he said.

MOSES LAKE AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. — A National Guard aviator accidentally shot himself down yesterday when a bullet he fired on ground-strafing maneuvers struck a rock and ricocheted into his airplane’s cooling system.

The pilot landed safely on an emergency strip near the strafing range.