Neer City, Oregon

"A cemetery still exists about a mile up Neer Road, but Neer City is only a ghostly memory."

Mrs. Ervin Abraham, "Of Once-Booming Hamlet of Goble," The Oregonian, January 3, 1966

The Neer came to Columbia County in 1852, when Oregon was still a frontier territory. Simon Neer took out a Donation Land claim and plotted Neer City in August, 1883. Later in 1896 Goble was plotted by pioneer George Foster and was named after Daniel Goble, the Ohio trapper who staked first claim to the city. The same year, a creek separating the two frontier towns was named Goble Creek. And later in 1896, one Reuben Foster, perhaps a relative of George Foster, founded Reuben. Thus, the hamlets were born.

…

In 1890s, Goble, Neer City, and Reuben were boisterous and booming. The railroad, which poked eastward, through Goble and Kalama, Washington, across the Columbia River helped. It drew jobs and people and eliminated … the need to bring the mail from Kalama by rowboat. Later, the three communities got their own post office, first located on a scow and later in a store owned by Neer City resident Dick Link. As time passed, Neer City's population swelled to 100.

Steam boats plying the Columbia River required fuel, and the huge stands of native timber surrounding the three communities made them a natural fueling station.

…

Gradually, however, the boom diminished. River boats, trains and loggers began to move on, abandoning Goble's hotel, two mills, boarding house, barber shops, hardware store, two general stores, church, school, and lamentably, the Red Men Lodge Hall. Even the town's cold storage plant, where frozen fish were packed for export, closed.

The post office in Neer City was transferred to Goble. And in 1923, the post office shut up shop permanently. The hardwood floor from the lodge hall was torn up and re-laid in the 80-year-old home of Mrs. Metcalf's daughter, Mrs. Dave Easter. Fire and wreckers claimed other homes. The present swallowed the past and the three communities which belonged to it. But the memories remain - vividly for Mrs. Metcalf.

The brightest one is of the terrible storm of 1894. She was a girl then, just seven years old. She remembers the storm had struck and the Columbia River was running widly at flood stage. With her mother, Mrs. Metcalf went to a bluff a short distance from their Neer City home to catch a glimpse of the Iraida, a Rainier stern wheeler making a daily trip between Portland and Rainier. While walking to the bluff, the cyclone struck, ripping and clawing the earth. Rain fell in sheets, thunder shook the sky and lightning stabbed through the black clouds. Cottonwood trees toppled over in swaths as if uprooted by a bulldozer. Deep-rooted firs were toppled by the force of the wind. At the bluff, mother and daughter saw a huge swell rolling up the Columbia toward the Iraida. It picked up the stern wheeler, lifted it out of the river and dropped it on the railroad track running along the bank. A second later a second giant swell plucked the river boat of the tracks, returning it to the river. Back at home, buckets were used to bail the rain water out of their home.

CLICK HERE to continue exploring the highway