"Fort Clatsop Trail" by Amy Ryding

Fort Clatsop, Oregon ~ Photo by Amy Ryding

This photo was taken in July. Check out Amy's picture of yesterday's snow-covered beach in Long Beach, Washington.

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Gone

Fort Clatsop, Netul River ~ June 2007    

Some people view the pilings scattered throughout our rivers and bays as eye pollution. Others view them as historic markers of what once filled the space. Wildlife views them as resting places. How do you view them? Do you know the story of these pilings?  Did someone you know work here?

 

GONE
A floating heirloom
Set adrift
Once pulsing with pride
Forecasting good fortunes ahead
Now these timbers
Moss soaked, lean-to
Another tide

 

Cyndi Mudge, Guest Blogger

 

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Mini Fort Clatsop Tot Lot at Tapiola Park

May 22, 2010

A few years ago, businesses and individuals in Astoria got together and created this wonderful playground. Laurel and I have walked through the area for older children and now Laurel and Teagan enter the Tot Lot designated for kids ages 2 to 5. It's nicely designed, and even at just under a year and a half, Teagan was able to use most of the play areas and wear himself out.

Tapiola Park is located on the Young's Bay side of the Astoria hill just across the street from the bay. Wooden play structures reflect aspects of the area. You'll find a Victorian house, the Riverfront Trolley, wooden salmon, and a fishing boat, along with the tot-friendly "Fort Clatsop." The real Fort Clatsop is on the other side of the bay. Charming tiles on the entrance to the Tot Lot show the plants and flowers as Meriwether Lewis might have drawn them. Just a few yards up the hill is the skateboard park where I took this photo.

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Theme Day: Statues

The first of each month is Theme Day at City Daily Photo, and the theme for May is "Statues." As opposed to sculptures, statues are defined as three-dimensional, somewhat realistic, representational of humans or animals, and usually about life-size. Astoria proper has only one that I can think of, the Doughboy Monument, which I've already posted here on the Astoria Daily Photo blog, and in more detail on my personal blog.

Wracking my brain for Theme Day, I came up with two more statues just outside of Astoria at Fort Clatsop. The first is Arrival (above) depicting Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, a Clatsop Indian, and the dog, Seaman. It's by Stan Wanlass and is found inside the visitors' center at the fort. The second is Sacagawea and her child by Jim Demetro, placed fittingly in the forest between the Fort Clatsop visitors' center and the reconstructed fort. The link shows the statue at Netul Landing, not far away. I don't know whether it was moved there since I took this photo in 2009, or if it was moved back here since the web page was built.

There is another human representation, The Whispering Giant, that I've already included in this blog, but I'd call it more of a sculpture than a statue, as it's only the head and it's quite large.

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

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Two canoes: one for the sea, one for the river

The two canoes in this post are on display at Fort Clatsop, just outside of Astoria. The top photo is the canoe on display outside the fort's museum, and is a typical ocean-going Chinook Indian canoe. They were made in several sizes to carry various numbers of people. The ocean-going canoes were often used for hunting seals. This canoe is the same style as the burial canoe replica seen in my earlier post. You can also read about Chinook canoes on this interesting site.

From the site linked above, I learned that this canoe is for use on rivers, also called "sweet water." It rests near the end of the trail that leads to the canoe landing used by Lewis and Clark.

For more pictures of Fort Clatsop and the trail in the woods, see this post with photos I took in 2001.

Lewis & Clark's canoe landing

Just about a block down a remarkably peaceful trail through the dense woods from Lewis and Clark's Fort Clatsop replica, the trail gives way to a short boardwalk over the marshy ground. A few paces further, and you emerge at the spot used by the expedition as a canoe landing. They had already camped and traded on other parts of the Columbia River's mouth, so this was not their first stop, but it was the landing they used to access the fort during the wet winter of 1805-1806. Originally named the Netul River, it is now called the Lewis and Clark River. A short distance to our left, the river feeds into Youngs Bay and then directly into the Columbia. In this photo, you're looking south into Oregon.

Stepping out of dense woods onto the river at this point presents a rewarding view, so beautifully contrasted yet integral with the vegetation of the forest. The rigidly regular pilings you see in the distance are the remnants of a large lumber industry in past decades. Kayakers still use the river, and I'm sure it's used by fishermen as well. The day I was there, several people were paddling their way up the river in kayaks, making an interesting continuum to the history that was on my mind.

. For more photos of water, please visit Watery Wednesday and follow the links.

Lewis & Clark's Fort Clatsop, life-size replica

I think one of the coolest places to visit in or around Astoria is Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery spent the unusually rainy and cold winter of 1805-1806. It's only about a 10-minute drive from downtown Astoria. The fort replica itself is very interesting, and the dense forest surrounding it is breathtaking, making a visitor feel that they've entered the depths of the wilderness. (It seems there are more trees now than when the first replica was built in 1955.) Although you enter the grounds through a small, nicely-done museum run by the National Park Service, once you're a few steps out the back door, you feel as if you could be part of that early party of explorers, especially if you go off-season when there are fewer visitors. I took this photo on October 4th, and there were only about ten or fifteen other people on the grounds, most of whom were a small group of parents and teachers learning what a volunteer needs to know to take students through the fort, since the staff is short-handed.

If you've ever been to Fort Apache, Fort Vancouver, or just about any other preserved or rebuilt frontier fortress, you'll find Fort Clatsop very small. There are six rooms, each with several bunks, a fireplace, and a rough-hewn table and benches. There's also a small indoor area for food storage. It's quite sparse, but in a weird way, inviting and almost comfortable-looking. I don't know if Lewis and Clark felt the same way about it. I do know they thought it was a very long winter, and it rained all but 12 of the days they spent there. One of the great things about visiting this fort is, you won't find any chained barriers or "Keep Out" signs (except for the food-storage room, which is closed off by a half-door). At least most of the time you can walk through the rooms and get the look and feel of the entire place.

October 4th was my first visit to Fort Clatsop after the fire of October 3, 2005 burned it to the ground just about a month before the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial festivities began - featuring, of course, the fort. More than 700 volunteers helped rebuild the replica, and it was dedicated on December 9, 2006. Meanwhile, events that had been planned for the location had to be held elsewhere. To me, it looked identical to the 1955 replica, but the fire and rebuilding did give historians a chance to make minor changes based on things they had learned since the original replica was built.

I have more photos, so stay tuned.

More info: Wikipedia