ASTORIA, Ore., city, port of entry and seat of Clatsop County, on the Columbia River, nine miles from its mouth, and 101 miles by the Astoria & C. Ft Railroad from Portland. Sev eral foreign steamship lines touch here, the largest vessels coming up to its five miles of water frontage through the deep, broad channel dredged in the bar at the river mouth. Its salmon fishing and canning industries are among the greatest in the world: several hun dred boats go out to the fishing grounds on the bar every afternoon during the season of about 100 days, some 1,500 in all being employed; and the canneries utilize some $2,000,000 capital, and turn out about 15,000,000 cans of salmon a year. It has also subsidiary can manufactories and iron works, great lumber works from the vast forests of the Pacific slope, flouring mills, breweries, etc. The United States census of 1914 recorded 57 manufacturing establishments of factory grade, employing 1,375 persons, of whom 1,172 were wage earners, receiving $866,000 annually in wages. The capital in vested aggregated $5,293,000, and the year's pro duction was valued at $4,587,000: of this, $1, 836,000 was the value added by manufacture.
The city has a very large export trade in the special products of Oregon and Washington — lumber, wheat, oats, live stock, wool, potatoes, apples, etc. Among its buildings, the most notable are the United States custom-house, the post office, Saint Mary's Hospital (R. C.), and Fort Clatsop dating from its foundation by the Lewis and Clarke expedition in 1805. For the founding of Astoria in 1811, see ASTOR, JOHN JACOB, and consult Irving, W., 'Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains' (Philadelphia 1836). On its seizure by the English in the War of 1812, they re named it Fort Saint George; in 1818 it was re stored to the United States though occupied till 1845 by the fur stations first of the North west Company, then of the Hudson Bay Com pany with which the former consolidated. It received a city charter in 1876. Pop. (1910) 9,599; (1914) 10,100.