We heard Astoria before we saw it, or rather we heard the sea lions, a raucous barking rolling up from the piers as we came off the bridge in the fog. The Astoria-Megler Bridge had carried us four miles across the mouth of the Columbia from the Washington side, and halfway over Lia had gone quiet, gripping the door handle, because the river below was so vast and grey it might as well have been the sea. When the mist thinned we found a town clinging to green hills, Victorian houses in faded colours stacked one above another, and the whole place smelling of brine, diesel and coffee. It looked, Lia said, like a town that had stories it wasn’t going to tell you all at once.
The Astoria Column
We climbed the Astoria Column on our first morning, a slender tower on the highest hill wrapped in a painted spiral of the region’s history, one hundred and sixty-odd steps up a tight interior stair that left us both wheezing and laughing. At the top the wind nearly took Lia’s hat. But the view. The Columbia spreading out to the Pacific, the bridge a thin green thread, the Coast Range folding away south, and toy-sized cargo ships waiting at the river bar. There’s a tradition of throwing small balsa gliders from the top, and we bought two, launched them, and watched them wheel and vanish into the trees below. Ours flew terribly. We didn’t care.
Cannery ghosts and sea lions
Astoria was once a salmon-canning capital, and the old piers still stand out over the water on barnacled pilings, some restored into cafés and the excellent Columbia River Maritime Museum, others left to rot photogenically. We walked the Riverwalk along the front, and the sea lions had colonised an entire floating dock, hundreds of them hauled out and complaining, the smell tremendous, the noise absurd. Lia was delighted. Inside the maritime museum we stood before the story of the Columbia Bar, the “Graveyard of the Pacific,” where two thousand ships have gone down, and I understood the town’s weathered look a little better. It has always lived at the edge of something dangerous and beautiful.
Victorian streets and film sets
Wandering the steep residential streets is half the pleasure of Astoria, past grand old sea-captain houses like the ornate Flavel House with its cupola and gardens. Film crews love it here, and half the town will happily tell you which movie was shot on which corner, The Goonies chief among them, so that Lia kept recognising staircases and porches with small shrieks of recognition. We ended the day at a brewery in a converted cannery building, the fog rolling back in over the river, a foghorn sounding somewhere out at the bar. It was cold and damp and I was completely content. Lia raised her glass to the grey window and said, to Astoria. To Astoria.
Getting There
Astoria sits at the northwest tip of Oregon, where the Columbia River meets the Pacific, about two hours by car northwest of Portland along Highway 30, which follows the river the whole way. From the Washington side you cross the long Astoria-Megler Bridge, an experience in itself. There’s no commercial airport in town, so Portland is your gateway, and a car is essential for exploring the coast beyond. The compact downtown and Riverwalk are walkable, with a vintage trolley running the waterfront in season. Come prepared for fog and rain in any month, and bring a warm layer even in summer. The moody weather is half the town’s soul.