Astoria—An Amazing Agurb®

Astoria is another enchanting agurb® that I got to visit on my WA talk and tour. It is actually in OR, but is in the NW corner of the state, on the south side of the Columbia River. Lewis & Clark camped near Astoria in the winter of 2005-06 and the Pacific Fur Company, owned by America’s first multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor, built Fort Astoria in 1811, naming it for Astor. By the late 1800’s the towns salmon canneries, forest and shipping industries had turned it into the liveliest boom town between Seattle and San Francisco.

If you were a painter you couldn’t ask for a better setting. This old world town sits in rolling hills, along the Columbia River, at the mouth of the Pacific Ocean. The old, restored homes only add to its charm. It’s no wonder that in the past twenty years the following films used Astoria as a backdrop for their storylines: The Goonies; Come See the Paradise; Kindergarten Cop; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III; Free Willy; and Short Circuit.

I wrote about Astoria’s local leader’s efforts to rejuvenate The Astoria Mill site, an 1870s era saw mill that shut down in 1989. The site was an ecological disaster, became a town dump and was a real eyesore sitting at the entrance to the downtown. I visited the site and took the pictures that you see here. It’s hard to believe that these new homes sit on the same spot that I wrote about in BoomtownUSA.

I found Astoria to be a very vibrant community. One couple that we sat next to at dinner told us that they hadn’t been back for two years, but were shocked with the improvements that they saw taking place in the town. People are going to quickly discover Astoria and my guess is that its best days lie in the future. There are still way too many vacancies in the downtown and the riverfront is not fully utilized, but this agurb® is a real sleeper. Get there to visit, if you are close.