Astoria, Oregon

    In May, 1792, American Captain Robert Gray sailed his 230-ton Columbia Rediviva between Point Adams in what is now Oregon and Cape Disappointment in what is now Washington to first enter the Columbia River. Ten years later, President Thomas Jefferson asked his personal secretary, Army Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead an expedition to the Pacific to find " ...whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado, or any other river may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce".
    The Lewis and Clark Expedition left Pittsburgh August 31, 1803. The Corps of Discovery entered the Lower Columbia River in November of 1805 and stayed through March 1806. They "wintered over" at Fort Clatsop, where it rained all but 12 days, hunting, making moccasins and other clothing, trading with the Clatsop, Tillamook, and Chinook Indians, and working on their journals.
    In 1811, five years after the departure of Lewis & Clark, John Jacob Astor, a New York financier, sent fur traders aboard the ship Tonquin to establish a trading post. They built Fort Astoria on a site now preserved as a monument in the downtown area.
    Well over 200 major shipwrecks have occurred near the mouth of the Columbia River -- known for a century as "The Graveyard of the Pacific." One, the Peter Iredale of 1906, is still visible on the beach at Fort Stevens State Park. Native Americans lived in the area for an estimated 10,000 years before Captain Gray's arrival.
    The area of Astoria and Warrenton is a nationally significant historic region at the western end of the Lewis & Clark Trail. Astoria is the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies; a place that takes visitors back to simpler times, its architecture dominated by hundreds of Victorian homes clinging to steep wooded hillsides and with a revitalized 1920s era downtown; all set against a backdrop of tremendous natural beauty in the temperate rain forest at the mouth of the Columbia River.
    Visitors have an opportunity to escape into an appealing, intriguing past. Unspoiled and generally uncrowded, Astoria nonetheless has several first-class interpretive attractions including Fort Clatsop, the Columbia River Maritime Museum, the Flavel House, Fort Stevens State Park, the Astoria Riverfront Trolley and the Astoria Column. The area has an extraordinary sense of place and feeling of history.
    Astoria, Oregon has been discovered by Hollywood for its architecture, history and scenery. Some of the movies filmed in Astoria are: The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop,   more >>