Where the Columbia River hits the Pacific, Oregon’s wildest small city clings to the hills

America’s oldest settlement west of the Rockies

Astoria, Oregon, clings to steep, forested hills where the Columbia River pours into the Pacific Ocean. About 10,000 people live here, and the town has been around since 1811.

You can climb a 125-foot painted column, walk up to a shipwreck rusting on the beach, and cross the longest truss bridge in North America without ever leaving the city limits.

Victorian homes line the hillsides with views of passing ships and the Washington shoreline across the water. The history runs deep, and it starts with fur traders and a famous expedition.

Fur traders and Lewis and Clark put Astoria on the map

John Jacob Astor, a New York fur trader, sent his Pacific Fur Company to build Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811.

That made it the first permanent American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains and the oldest city in Oregon. But Astor’s crew wasn’t the first to camp here.

Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805-1806 at Fort Clatsop, just a few miles south. Over the decades, fishing, fur trading and shipping drew immigrants from Scandinavia, China and the East Coast.

Climb 164 spiral steps inside the Astoria Column

The Astoria Column rises 125 feet from the top of Coxcomb Hill, already 600 feet above the Columbia River.

Vincent Astor, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, and the Great Northern Railway financed it, and the column went up on July 22, 1926.

A sgraffito mural wraps the outside, an old technique where artists etch images into wet plaster. This one shows 14 scenes from Oregon’s early history.

You climb 164 spiral steps to reach the observation deck, and from there you can see the river, the Pacific, forests and distant mountains all at once.

Ride a 1913 trolley along the Columbia River

The Astoria Riverwalk follows the Columbia River on a paved waterfront trail past old canneries, shops and historical markers. Running beside it are the tracks for the Astoria Riverfront Trolley, known as “Old 300.”

The trolley was built in 1913 in San Antonio, Texas, and bounced around to Portland before landing in Astoria. You can hop on and off near museums, shops and viewing platforms right on the river.

Ships pass on the Columbia while you ride, and the whole thing feels like a different century.

Rain fell all but 12 days at Fort Clatsop

Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery reached the mouth of the Columbia River in November 1805 after 18 months on the trail from the Missouri River.

The group, including Sacagawea and York, voted to set up camp on the south side of the river, picking a sheltered spot near freshwater and game. They built Fort Clatsop and spent a miserable winter.

Rain fell all but 12 of the roughly 100 days they stayed.

Today, a replica of the fort rebuilt in 2006 stands inside Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, and you can walk through the same tight quarters.

Walk right up to a shipwreck on the sand

At Fort Stevens State Park, the rusted skeleton of the Peter Iredale sticks out of the beach like a metal rib cage.

The four-masted steel ship was built in England in 1890 and ran aground on Oct. 25, 1906, while sailing from Mexico to Portland. All 27 crew members survived, but nobody ever salvaged it.

At low tide, you can walk right up and touch the hull.

The wreck has been wearing away for more than a century, and Fort Stevens itself covers over 4,300 acres with beaches, hiking trails, a freshwater lake and camping.

A Japanese submarine shelled this park in 1942

Fort Stevens State Park holds a piece of World War II history most Americans have never heard.

On June 21, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-25 surfaced at the mouth of the Columbia River and fired 17 shells at the fort. The shells landed in a baseball field and a swamp.

Nobody died, and the damage was almost nothing. But it marked the first time a foreign power had fired on a continental U.S. military installation since the War of 1812.

You can still walk through the old gun batteries and concrete bunkers, including Battery Russell, the main target that night.

2,000 ships lost at the Graveyard of the Pacific

The Columbia River Maritime Museum sits on the waterfront in downtown Astoria and serves as Oregon’s official state maritime museum.

Inside, more than 30,000 objects cover fishing, navigation, shipwrecks and Coast Guard rescues.

The centerpiece is the story of the Columbia River Bar, a stretch of water where roughly 2,000 vessels have gone down since 1792. That stretch earned the name “Graveyard of the Pacific.”

Step outside and you can board the Lightship Columbia, a National Historic Landmark that once guided ships safely into the river’s mouth.

Drive 4.1 miles across the longest truss bridge in North America

The Astoria-Megler Bridge stretches 4.1 miles across the Columbia River from Oregon to Washington. When it opened in 1966, it completed the final gap in U.S. Route 101 between Olympia, Wash., and Los Angeles.

Engineers built it to handle winds up to 150 mph and river currents of 9 mph, and it remains the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.

You drive high above the shipping channel with water on both sides and nothing but steel beneath you. Each October, the Great Columbia Crossing opens the bridge to pedestrians for a 10K walk and run.

Captain Flavel watched his ships from the tower

The Flavel House Museum is a Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion built in 1886 in downtown Astoria.

Captain George Flavel, a Columbia River bar pilot, made his fortune guiding ships through the treacherous river mouth and built this house to show for it.

Ornate woodwork, fireplaces and high ceilings fill the rooms, and a tower at the top gave the family a direct view of river traffic.

The surrounding garden holds trees Flavel collected on his voyages, including a giant sequoia and a ginkgo.

Bumble Bee Seafoods started right here on Pier 39

The Hanthorn Cannery on Pier 39 dates to 1875 and is the oldest remaining fish processing plant on the lower Columbia River.

This is where the Columbia River Packers Association got its start, and that company eventually became Bumble Bee Seafoods.

A free, self-guided museum inside the old cannery displays wooden fishing boats, canning machinery and the stories of the workers who kept the line moving.

From the pier, you get views of the Columbia River and the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and sea lions sometimes show up in the nearby marina.

Hike through moss and old growth to the Column

The Cathedral Tree Trail runs about one mile from a neighborhood trailhead on Irving Avenue up to the Astoria Column on Coxcomb Hill.

Boardwalks cover the wettest sections as you pass through mossy groves of Sitka spruce and western hemlock. The highlight is the Cathedral Tree, a massive old-growth Sitka spruce along the route.

By the time you reach the top, views of the city, the river and the bridge open up before you even get to the Column. It’s the kind of walk that earns the view.

Explore Astoria’s Waterfront in Oregon

You can reach Astoria in about two hours by car from Portland, heading northwest to where the Columbia River meets the Pacific.

Summers run mild, with highs often in the 60s and 70s, but the area gets about 75 inches of rain a year, so pack waterproof layers no matter when you go.

Once you arrive, the Riverwalk, museums and shops are all walkable, and the trolley connects most downtown spots along the waterfront. Give yourself at least a full day to cover the highlights.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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