10 years ago this week – 2012
LONG BEACH, Wash. — The Long Beach Peninsula is becoming a whale graveyard.
Less than a month after two dead whales were discovered on the beaches of Seaview and Oysterville, a dead orca washed ashore near Long Beach on Saturday morning.
It’s the second orca found decaying on a peninsula beach in the last three months. The 12-foot female orca washed up about 1 mile north of the Cranberry approach, according Tiffany Boothe of the Seaside Aquarium.
WARRENTON – Clatsop County is beginning the next phase of development at the North Coast Business Park with the construction of a key route through the 270-acre site.
Big River Excavating is clearing vegetation and installing silt-control fencing along the route of Ensign Lane, which will run from U.S. Highway 101 east to Highway 101 Business. Completion is expected by late fall.
The Astoria Bridge stretches 4.1 miles across the mouth of the Columbia River, as much a symbol of Astoria as the man whose legislative prowess helped put it in place.
William “Bill” Holmstrom, an 18-year veteran of the Oregon Legislature from Gearhart and representing Clatsop County, died Feb. 6 at a Salem hospital. From his time in the Oregon House and Senate Holmstrom is remembered as a tireless advocate for North Coast transportation projects.
The U.S. Coast Guard Sector Columbia River has received an upgraded MH-60T Jayhawk rescue helicopter.
The helicopter features upgrades that greatly enhance mission performance capabilities for flight crews. It improves medium range response and recovery operations including law enforcement, search and rescue as well as cutter operations.
50 years ago – 1972
Clatsop Community College students perpetrated a second “kidnapping” today — Clatsop County Sheriff Carl Bondietti — and had vowed to hold him and Astoria Mayor Harry Steinbock hostage for a ransom of 200 pints of blood.
The college is hosting an American Red Cross blood drive today and kidnappings were intended to spur contributions.
An unusually bad weather fishing season and a tremendous influx of boats from along the coast has made the winter crab catch spotty to poor.
Never in recent years have so many crab pots been set down between Tillamook Head and Grays Harbor, Washington, according to reports. One fish packing plant in the Astoria area estimated up to 50,000 crab pots.
Another person said the pots extend seaward farther than he has ever seen them before.
Another protest over the proposed American Metal Climax aluminum reduction plant in Warrenton was received Wednesday by the Clatsop County Board of Commissioners.
Asking the commission not to permit construction of the smelter at the Warrenton industrial site was the Willapa Harbor Oyster Growers’ Association.
Commissioners received the protest written by Richard K. Murakami, president of the association, who said his group’s greatest concern was to its million dollar industry.
“Because of the prevailing weather conditions, air-emitted pollutants will reach the Long Beach Peninsula. If not emitted by air, these pollutants, including the fluorides, will be emitted by water and thereby endanger the valuable commercial and soft salmon industries as well,” Murakami wrote.
Murakami said Columbia River water penetrates into Willapa Bay and added that his industry employs nearly 1,000 people, “whose jobs could be in grave danger.”
Astoria City Manager Dale Curry said despite the fact that Astoria has an immoral practices ordinance, the city apparently has no authority to prohibit businesses which deal in sex films or books.
CANNON BEACH — Anybody want a lifeboat — a 26-foot one at that? There’s one up for auction. Minimum bid asked? $500.
The lifeboat is a 56-man craft that washed ashore at Tolovana Park in the early morning of Jan. 9 after being lost by The World President, a steamship owned by the General Seamanship Co. of Portland.
75 years ago — 1947
Beachcombers on the Long Beach Peninsula, from North Head to the foot of Cranberry Road, are having troubles in collecting the harvest of the sea.
At the foot of Cranberry Road are stationed grim-faced U.S. Army guards protecting the remains of the Army ferry Arrow from the hands of the beachcombers.
LOS ANGELES — Gardner Cowles, head of a newspaper, magazine and broadcasting empire, today expressed optimism over the immediate future of newspapers and magazines but said radio’s future is not too bright, and it may take 10 years or more to put television on a paying basis.
SEASIDE — Construction of an airstrip with adjoining resort facilities has been started on a 57-acre tract bordering Sunset Lake, 3 miles north of Gearhart, by Clifton A. Seales, of Portland.
Seales, a former U.S. Army sergeant, plans a 300 by 1,800-foot runway with an asphalted surface, lighting for night flying, two hangers and maintenance facilities for small aircraft. A floatplane ramp may be constructed on Sunset Lake.
A specially-equipped airplane will take off from the Astoria airport Monday — or on the first day of good flying weather thereafter — to broadcast tree seed over a 600-acre forest tract west of Saddle Mountain, in the first aerial operation of its kind ever attempted in Clatsop County.
