A Rainy Day in Astoria

So today we decided that even though it was raining steadily we should get out and head to Astoria to go to some of the local museums that we could do indoors. We headed first to the Hanthorn cannery on Pier 39.

The cannery is now cold storage and offices, as well as a small coffee shop and Rogue Brewery Pub but during its heyday, it sent millions of cases of salmon and tuna per year around the world. There were three huge walk in refrigerators that had old equipment like this packer, you can see how the metal rings got smaller to hold the cans so that the woman could hand pack the fish into it. 

After the fish was packed it went through a machine like this where the lid was added and then the cans would be heated and well canned.

Only women worked in the canneries, they cleaned the fish, cut it up, packed the cans and worked all the machinery. There were not unions or men on the lines.  The Hanthorn Cannery was built in 1875. At one time 38 canneries operated on the Columbia River. Salmon was king, but by 1900, the salmon runs were suffering from over fishing. Tuna revived the canneries and over took salmon as the most popular canned fish.  They used to fish with the large gill nets out of medium sized wooden boats. Now a days they are trying to outlaw the use of gill nets because unfortunately they don’t just catch tuna they also catch dolphins.

After Pier 39 we headed over to Pier 38 to see the sea lions. The lady at the chamber of commerce said that they usually have 6 or 8 sea lions that hang around all year long but this year they have upwards of 100 or more. They are not sure where they have all come from. They are literally taking over the marina docks; there were signs that told people that they could not access their boats because of them. I don’t know about you but I love sea lions, they are hilarious to watch.

 These two were wrestling trying to knock each other off of the wharf.

 

Some of them what seemed to be brands and tags, we are not sure how they mark them to keep track of them, the branding seems a bit excessive but maybe they were just scars.

 

Not sure if these are male or female sea lions but they certainly seem regal.

After checking out the sea lions we headed up the hill to check out the Goonies House. For those of you who don’t watch many movies The Goonies was a movie that was filmed in 1985 and actually took place in Astoria. It was about a group of kids who went on an adventure to unearth the long-lost fortune of One-Eyed Willie, a legendary 17th-century pirate. The story concept came from Steven Spielberg and was written by Chris Columbus and directed by Richard Donner. The house is owned privately but they allow people to come up and take a picture.

Just down the road from the Goonie house was the school from Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Remember it’s “Not a tumor”  

 

It turns out that there were quite a few movies filmed on the Oregon Coast from Point Break with Patrick Swayze, The Guardian with Kevin Costner & Ashton Kutcher and Free Willy I & II.  We visited the Film museum which gives you some movie history in the area and allows you to actually film yourself in different sets. We filmed Len doing a scene from the Shining. he actually did a pretty good impression of Jack Nicolson.

Here is the link to it http://www.ofmfilms.com/share.php?id=000005852d4c2

 I also got a great mug shot of him

Across the street was the Flavel House and Carriage House. It is a Victorian mansion built in 1885 for Captain George Flavel. Captain Flavel was a noted bar pilot on the Columbia river and a very honest and prominent business man in Astoria.

The house is approximately 11,600 square feet. There were six original fireplaces that featured imported tiles and elaborate hand carved mantels.

 There were 14 foot ceilings on the first floor and 12 feet on the second with embellished plaster medallions and plaster crown moldings. The house had indoor plumbing, gas lighting and central heating. The first floor had a grand entrance hall, formal parlor, music room, library, dining room and conservatory. There was also a butler’s pantry, kitchen and mud room.

This is the Dining Room with the Conservatory at the back. It could be closed off by giant pocket doors. In fact each room had these enormous pocket doors, they were all hand carved and quite intricate.

 

This is the music room where both daughters, Nellie and Katie would hold music recitals.

 

This is the butler's pantry right off of the dining room. The back staircase was also for the servants and went all the way up past the second floor to the attic.

 

This is the library. All the windows were floor to ceiling with shutters on all of them.

 

 

The second floor featured the main bathroom with a metal tub, five bed chambers and a small sewing room.  This was one of the daughters bedrooms.

Each bedroom had access to running water but there was only one bathtub and water closet on the second floor.

The attic held two bedrooms for the domestic help and the tower which gave the Captain a wide view of the Astoria and Columbia River.  The Carriage house currently is the ticket office but during its day it was three stories and held the families carriage, sleigh and small buggies, it also held the horses in the downstairs portion. There was also a tack room and hay loft. Later it served as a home to the family’s hired caretaker.

Since the house had gas lighting and had to be restored with electrical fixtures, none of the lighting was original but recreated to match as close as possible to fixtures of the period. They said some of the furniture came from later family members but all the furniture was realistic to the time period.  

All in all it was a shorter day but we saw a lot of interesting things. It looks like it is still going to be rainy over the next few days so we will see where we want to head to tomorrow.