Seaside

Page Index

• Lewis & Clark Salt Works / Lewis & Clark National Historic Park
• Seaside Roundabout
• Broadway Street
• Broadway Bridge
• Neawanna Creek Bridge

"Soon after its founding, the Oregon Highway Commission decided to extend the Columbia River Highway (CRH) westward to Seaside. On November 4, 1913, Clatsop County voters approved a bond issue for $400,000 for highway construction. By April 1914, forty-six miles of roadway, much of it through standing timber, had been surveyed. As planned, Seaside became the western terminus of the CRH. From Seaside, the highway paralleled the ocean beaches for twelve miles, then cut across lowlands another twelve miles into Astoria."

Oregon State Archives: A 1940 Oregon Coast Tour

SEASIDE, 20.4 m. [Southbound from Astoria], (16 alt., 1,565 pop.), (hotels, tourist cottages; seawater natatorium), Oregon's largest seaside resort, spreads across the narrow Necanicum River--which parallels the coast--and up and down a long narrow sandy bar. On the ocean side of this bar is a seawall that also forms a "boardwalk" above the beach. At the southern end of town the ground rises abruptly into a wooded ridge that bulges westward and forms a high, bold promontory.

Seaside was developed in the 1870s by Ben Holladay, already famed as former operator of the Overland Stage when he became a railroad builder in Oregon. Holladay built the sumptuous Seaside House, which attracted prominent guests from far and wide. Some came down the Columbia to a landing point on the Skipanon River, near Astoria, where they were met by beautifully equipped stage coaches for the last leg of their journey. Others came up from San Francisco via Holladay steamers.

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