I rarely enter writing contests, but the one celebrating the Astoria Column’s first one hundred years spoke to me. After all, I have a model of it in with other keepsakes in my ancestral altar. I’ve mentioned the column in all three of my works of fiction and my first memoir. It meant a lot to me to have my (1800 word) essay selected as third place, honorable mention in the contest’s memoir category. Too, I loved reading and hearing the other pieces selected and be part of the celebration. Finally, I was moved to have two folks immediately after I read my piece to say they appreciated it, especially my words about Indigenous Peoples.

It made sense to me to make a movie including images to illustrate my words. No, I’m no movie-making professional, but I find the creative challenge fun. And I’ve aged enough to let go of worries about criticisms about either its content or professionalism.

So with that, please enjoy all 14 minutes of my piece below, where you will see photos related to the column, Astoria and the Columbia River after the first few minutes of my introduction. If you’re not so much an auditory person, you can read the complete piece below and also see it and the other winning pieces on the Astoria Writers Guild website. I thank the Guild and other sponsors of this celebration.

The Astoria Column: Celebrating a Beacon of History and Hope

This spring day of 2026, I gaze across the room toward my inherited keepsake of the Astoria Column. The faint mural winds around its pillar, symbolizing designs by Attilio Pusterla, and its gold plate murmurs Astoria Column on the Oregon Trail, Astoria Oregon. I try to remember to dust it and other cherished memorabilia in my ancestral altar. I can only pretend to know if Dad impulsively picked it up one day at a gift shop, or rather, someone gifted it to him in appreciation of those stories he crafted about Columbia River shipping, and all things maritime.

I was too excited to muse about the column in my earliest years as we scampered aboard the Astoria Ferry, bound for our cabin on the Long Beach Peninsula. No, I didn’t crane my neck to try to detect it peeking up from Coxcomb Hill. Instead, my eyes darted between the mighty Columbia’s waves, and both Oregon and Washington shorelines. Certainly, it was the last thing on my mind during my sixteenth year when I mistakenly tried to learn to shift manual gears on the bridge’s southbound climb, traffic slowed by toll collectors on a busy Labor Day weekend. No, for after all, after putting the car in park mid-hill, I shamefully covered my face and hurriedly exchanged seats with Mom, no mood to be in awe of the grand river we straddled. But yes, during nearly every trip since, my neck cranes to spy the jutting column, hidden in misty winters and triumphing upward in a patch of blue-skied summer. Occasionally on remarkably clear days, I delay my trip home for a chance to huff up its 164 steps to inhale the breathtaking panorama from its observation deck into my heart and soul.

My fiction, blogs and memoirs instinctively share bits about this column somewhere within their text. Character Ernest is drawn to Astoria to chase gold, lured by a Coxcomb Hill Cache legend about Captain George Flavel. As Ernest searches for solutions to his own financial worries, he mystifies his daughter by lugging a metal detector up the hill in search of $10,000 stashed in a coffee can. Novel character Celia is struck by remarks about the column’s history as she volunteers for a friend’s daughter’s field trip, later encouraging kids to launch gliders from the top. Yes, we each have our own stories, legends and interpretations about this place.  

Astoria is beautiful. Now and before, though different now than then. Today, filled with residents and visitors, some with resources and others who struggle to get their next meal. It’s hard to imagine how it appeared to its earliest Peoples when salmon were pulled from the river and ocean in a way we can’t fathom today. Once, it was considered a place untouched. A spot for some to settle, and others to move on from. Today, tourists arrive by ship, car and occasionally bicycle, remark at the bridge’s 4.1-mile-long engineering feat, or taste fish and chips and locally brewed beer. And today, Astoria houses engaged residents while its streets too are inhabited by people displaced by a host of personal and societal challenges.

Today, one-hundred years after the column’s founding, what does it whisper to its listeners? Do those words include murmurings I didn’t muse about in my early years?  Oh yes, my sentiments have grown complicated. I share my dad’s love of the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean, and their attributes: exploration, the mighty Coast Guard, pilot crossings, transportation, fishing, and sheer natural beauty. The column wasn’t yet erected in those earliest years my grandfather, a boy who would grow up to write about the Northwest Fur Company, journeyed by the T.J. Potter Steamship from Portland to Megler. Yet, I’m certain he praised its construction two decades later as he made his way through Astoria by automobile.  Construction that most certainly returned pride and community support to a town that was destroyed by fire only a few years earlier, leaving thousands homeless. After all, the column is a beacon of so much we value about Oregon. Adventure, fortitude, bravery, and the courage to give up everything to seek a new chapter.

No, no such landmark existed as explorers and missionaries like my third great grandparents traveled up the Columbia River by sailing ship just thirty years after Lewis and Clark explored its shores. Fort Clatsop used as a seasonal post by both Native Americans and fur traders to cure and salt salmon, before shipping it elsewhere. For certain, some of the stories inscribed into the column had not happened yet: burgeoning timber and fishing industries, and birth of the railroad. Instead of peering toward a column above the riverbank, my earliest Oregon ancestors were welcomed by the Coastal Mountain Range, the snow cone top of a not yet erupted Mount Saint Helens, gently sloping Mount Adams, and as they neared Fort Vancouver, Mount Hood’s craggy cornices.

Today, as we celebrate the column’s first one hundred years, do some feel disappointed in its symbolism? The mural exudes boldness and courage, but might it seep shadows and unintended caricatures to those with Indigenous blood of what people of privilege held true? I do not carry Native American blood, yet my heart has struggled to understand my twenty-one-year-old third great grandmother’s decision to travel from the east coast to introduce a Christian education to Pacific Northwest Native Peoples. I am grateful she formed our family roots here and went on to help form Willamette University, yet I too acknowledge how unaware she was of the centuries of beliefs, history and customs held by those she hoped to serve. Daring and courageous people sought new opportunities and resources. And, yes, it is easier to choose what is best for us if it isn’t clearly defined who or what might suffer because of it.

Yet, my heart still shouts out and admires the column. It craves the next time I will climb to its top. I’m overwhelmed by the gift to peer out as far as my eyes can see to the Pacific Ocean, straining to spy the 28-mile-long Long Beach Peninsula.  I look upriver toward Longview and Portland, turn again to peer toward Young’s Bay, and gaze into the Northern Oregon Coast Range. Yes, I balance the challenge to celebrate as we do and still allow my heart’s melancholic threads to remind me about what has taken a long time to learn.

And so, in this Centennial Celebration, what I hope, is that we are forthright and honest about the good that has happened, along with the losses. That we give proper attention to gifts, successes and misfortunes to be both celebrated and mourned. That we recognize, yes, the column includes images of original Oregonians, the Chinook, and Clatsop. The same people who were decimated by smallpox, measles and malaria at up to ninety percent of their Indigenous population within a few decades of contact with visiting white people. And, although those of us with deep Oregon roots celebrate our early land claims; our hearts know the land was taken and replaced by false treaties for those – like the Kalapuyans –who originally lived on land my ancestors were awarded by Abraham Lincoln.

My sentimental brain darts in delight at stories I hold of our past. The Captain Gray who Dad delighted in impersonating from time to time, narrating how his ship, Columbia Rediviva, first entered the powerful Columbia – the “great river of the west.” The remains even today of the Peter Iredale on Clatsop Beach, stories of the Graveyard of the Pacific, and brave successful rescues. Oh, and the Corps of Discovery making it through their difficult winter stay at Fort Clatsop largely because of assistance provided by the Clatsop and Chinook Peoples. A place recognized as a National Register of Historic Places where both children and adults visit today to learn about the land’s past. And yes, John Jacob Astor who founded Fort Astoria. My memories hover over these things I’ve learned.

And thus, I celebrate my third great grandparents who believed the education they brought to be instructive. I celebrate those explorers on quests to learn what had not yet been discovered, or so they thought. And, oh my, those fur traders and trappers were brave and ingenious, even if they were too shortsighted to imagine times when beaver, mink and fox would become scarce. I celebrate emigrants who brought new and old ideas, talents and stories, even though not always treated equally. Finnish and Swedish immigrants recruited and welcomed to early Astoria to work in dangerous industries –canneries, fishing and logging –some later targeted as politically radical or socialist. Yet, through their determination and spirit, we gained improved wages and working conditions to benefit many. And yes, I celebrate the Indigenous Peoples who had a great deal to teach us and lost so much. And whose stories must be recognized and honored for generations to come.

Let us take a moment. Remember the past. How do we weave what we’ve learned into an honest portrayal that acknowledges the courage of those explorers, Original Peoples, pioneers, builders of industry, and the losses that came with it? How do we in 2026 take all this in: celebrate, acknowledge and repair? With honesty. With compassion. With a strong dose of willingness to admit there is much we do not know. Then and now. To move forward together in a rhythm that accepts elements that may be difficult. That embraces what might be new to us. That understands, we grow when we are made to feel uncomfortable.

And so, for me, the column soars and my heart beats quickly each time I spy a view of it. I write about it: memories and truths. I look forward to taking my grandson to the top and watch him launch a glider, hoping for the plane to catch a current to gently circle it to the ground. To tell him the stories. I’m eager to learn new stories from others, admitting I don’t know all the answers. And, yes, this is what we do. Celebrate the past and each other. Honor bravery, valor, kindness, compassion, creativity, honesty and truth. Come together and respect our differences, knowing that our days on earth truly are short. And this great earth sees and knows all.

Biography

Dede Montgomery is a 6th generation Oregonian and author of six books, including A Map of Her Own. She often writes with a deep connection to place, particularly the Pacific Northwest. Her storytelling is rooted in a sense of identity, family legacy, and the broader human experience.

Images from the Astoria Centennial Celebration, July 18, 2026

Dede’s Books