Woke up....well, actually, I'm not sure we really went to sleep...and had breakfast in the Fort Stevens State Park Campground, then went down to the beach, where there is a pretty cool shipwreck jutting out of the sand. It's the skeletal remnants of a sailing ship, the Peter Iredale, that went aground in 1906, after a strong gale blew it ashore.
All that's left of the Peter Iredale
After viewing the shipwreck, we went to the Fort Stevens State Park Historical area, where they have a great military museum, and several gun emplacements. The fort was built to protect the territory from possible Confederate raiders, during the Civil War, but was later also used in WWI, as well as during WWII. In WWII, a Japanese submarine actually fired about 14 shells at the fort, to no effect, then left for a patrol in the Aleutians. There is nothing remaining, now, but the old cement bunkers, where the guns were located.
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| Civil War Gun Mount, in Fort Stevens, Oregon, and one of the original gunnery crew members After touring the shipwreck and the Fort Stevens military museum, we headed back to Astoria, where we went through the Maritime Museum. If you ever go through Astoria, be sure to stop and see this museum. They have done an incredible job of building this place, even going to the trouble of removing a pilothouse from a WWII destroyer, barging it up the Columbia River, lifting it with a crane into the then-open-roofed museum, and building the museum around it. And that is only one exhibit, among many others. The main theme of the museum deals with the over 2,000 ships that have wrecked, trying to cross the sand bars, at the mouth of the Columbia River, as well as the Coast Guard's constant efforts to save the hapless sailors and fishermen. According to their informational placard, about 600 lives are save, each year, by the Coasties; pretty good use of our tax money, I'd say. |
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| Exhibit of a Coast Guard Rescue boat in the Maritime Museum, in Astoria |
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| They have an entire salmon trawler, as one of the exhibits, too |
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| Pilothouse of WWII destroyer, U.S.S. Knapp (DD-653) After leaving Fort Stevens, we headed south, stopping at a little commercial RV park located about one mile north of Seaside. |
After leaving Fort Stevens, we headed south, stopping at a little commercial RV park located about one mile north of Seaside.
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