Astoria
Subtitle: The Peerless Maritime Metropolis Of The Golden Northwest
Publisher: The Matthews-Northrup Company
Published: 1892
Language: eng
Number of pages: 38
Subjects: Astoria OR; canneries; railroad; logging; fishing; industry; salmon; houses; New York of the West
Description: "This 34-page booklet
was published about 1892, written by a prolific publicist of the
West, one Patrick Donan. “The Peerless Maritime Metropolis of the
Golden Northwest” was to be Astoria — once Astoria got  a
railroad. A brief and somewhat lurid account of the place of Astoria
in western American history leads to a description of the place “as
it is to-day,” a “cosmopolitan” city where one will find every
kind of person from “Piccadilly swells and Fifth Avenue dudes, to
Norwegian loggers, Finlander boatmen, Chinese mandarins, Chinook
princesses and Clatsop clam-diggers.”

<p style="margin-bottom:0in;line-height:100%;">The nineteen fish
canneries, the “miles of wharves, docks and warehouses,” the
sawmills and ironworks, the electric lights and the electric
streetcars, are portents of greater development. For Astoria “will
be, it must be, where river, rail and ocean meet; on the ocean, and
not inland. God and Nature have done everything to make Astoria the
mighty commercial emporium that [John Jacob] Astor planned.” Ah,
there are the immense forests, “as yet untouched by axe or saw,”
and the “exhaustless quantities” of coal, all at Astoria’s
door. When the railroad comes, all this and more will be turned to
industry, to commerce, to money.</p>

<p>The railroad finally came, in 1898. In the ensuing years, the
forests were cut, the fish were canned. But Astoria never became the
New York of the Pacific, never became the premier Pacific port, as
Donan insisted was inevitable. And after all his insistence may have
been paid for, by some of those who stood to gain if the city usurped
San Francisco. The power of positive thinking has its limits."</p>

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