Seaside to Astoria
"Wait a minute, this isn't the Columbia River Highway!?!"
Well, it used to be!
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Page Index
Oregon State Archives: A 1940 Oregon Coast Tour
This section of the route, which is one of the most spectacular in the United States, is never long out of sight of the sea. It crosses inlets and marshes on beautiful modern bridges; passes through villages reeking with the smell of salmon oil and decaying flotsam softened by the tantalizing odor of brine-soaked pilings; and proceeds over sand reaches where many bits of bone and shell from the refuse pits of an earlier civilization are exposed by the wind.
U.S. 101 crosses the Washington Line, in the middle of the Columbia River at a point 87 miles south of Aberdeen, Wash. Travelers cross the river on the Point Ellice-Astoria ferry. (Car and driver $1; passengers $.25 each).
At 0 m., is the junction with U.S. 30.
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/exhibits/coast/astoria.html
A. F. Litt. March 28, 2020
As you can tell from the lack of routes on the map at the top of the page, I haven't dug deep into this section of the highway. There are two reasons for this. One, it is a long way from home! But, really, the primary reason is that, until recently, I sort of thought that calling Seaside the western terminus of the highway was mostly a sentimental choice both Samuel C. Lancaster and Clarence E. Mershon made when putting together their books that was not really borne out by any true intentions of the Oregon Highway Commission (OHC) for Route 2. I decided to make the same choice, mostly to honor their work rather than truly believing that Route 2 ever really ran out to the ocean.
Recently, though, I've had the chance to dig a little deeper into the old OHC reports and discovered that, for a few short years, at least, the Astoria to Seaside road was in fact considered to be an official part of the Columbia River Highway (CRH). In fact, Michael C. Taylor has even, apparently, found evidence that there was some thought given to running the CRH all the way to Cannon Beach!
When it was decided to build the Coast Highway, Route 3, the road from Seaside to Astoria was re-designated as the beginning of the new highway.
So, does confirming that this stretch was once considered to be part of the CRH mean that I will go dive deeper on these first pages of the website?
The answer to that is a bit tricky, because, as I mentioned, it IS a long way from home, but yes, I do hope to take the time, now, to eventually suss out the true original route out in those distant (to me) lands. However, my priorities will still lie with finishing the work on the more traditionally accepted CRH routes between Astoria and Pendleton first.