Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1903 — PICTURESQUE ASTORIA. [ARTICLE]

PICTURESQUE ASTORIA.

Founded by Karly Explorers and Trappers a Hundred Years Ago. Astoria ‘is 1 one of the. most picturesque of American towns, quaint and old, having been founded by the early explorers and trappers who came to this country nearly a hundred years ago. Long the outpost of John Jacob Aster’s trading company, it was on£e taken by the British and held as a frofatier fort. Placed here on the steep river edge, where there was rightly no room for a city, and finding It difficult to crowd its way up the hill, the town has reached out over the river, many of the streets, banks, stores, hotels, canneries and warehouses being set up on piling, with the tide sweeping through underneath. Step off the sidewalk, and drop twenty feet Into salt water; look through the cracks in the little court of the hotel, and see the dark river swirling beneath, and smell the barnacled piling. Even the railrpod that now reaches the town comes in on legs, centipede-like, a long bridge of piers across a river bay. It is a strange, interesting, not unambitious old town, set about with net-drying platforms, slippery fish wharves, canneries exhaling the odor of cooking fish, the little, low homes of fishermen and net makers of many nationalities, from Norwegian to Portuguese; the crowded tenements of Chinese and Japanese workers in the canneries; and, higher up the hill, the more pretentious homes of the packers and business men. Here and there an Indian or two, remnants of a passing tribe, looke -on imperturbably at the usurpation of their ancient fishing places. When the tide favors, the river beyond the wharves is busy with the heavy boats of the fishers, and often, more distant, on the mighty river one sees an ocean craft bound up for Portland or down again to the sea. —Century.