Warrenton, Oregon - The Land of Better Living: Being, in Fact, a Truthful Exposition of As

The Land of Better Living: Being, in Fact, a Truthful Exposition of As

WARRENTON, third city of Clatsop County, is essentially an industrial center. Although established in a situation of surpassing beauty bor¬ dering on Young's Bay and the Columbia River, and with the Skipanon Waterway running through its heart, Warrenton's strategic position has tended toward growth along industrial lines rather than any other.

With three sawmills, several clam canneries, two salmon canneries and two salmon by-products plants, Warrenton is a maker-city, a manufacturing center.

The beach is near at hand. The surrounding country is fertile. Much salmon fishing is done from there. Warrenton has other assets and elements, but it remains first of all an industrial city.

Warrenton was the first city in the United States to have a woman mayor Later its charter was amended and it was the first city in the world to have a woman for a city manager.

Warrentons real industrial development followed upon the improvement of the Skipanon Waterway from a little semi-tidal river into a channel capable of handling ocean vessels. This gave its lumber mills the opportunities at¬ tendant upon cargo shipments and proved the real foundation stone of the city's expansion and prosperity.

Warrenton is Astoria's smaller sister city. It has all of the advantages of harbor, of rail facilities, of rates and connections which Astoria enjoys. It is progressive. In order to be in a position to command attention from industrial¬ ists, the City of Warrenton has secured large tracts of exceptionally fine indus¬ trial property. This is a public enterprise and is offered at nominal outlay to the man who would manufacture.

The North Beaches

Not a part of Clatsop County, but akin to it geographically, commercially, and in attractions and sympathies, the North beaches of Pacific County, Wash¬ ington, offer much the same attractions as do the Clatsop beaches.

Lying immediately north of the mouth of the Columbia River is the North Beach. For more than twenty miles it runs in one unbroken boulevard of sand to the entrance to Willapa Harbor. This incomparable sand-strip has come to be known as the World's Speedway.

Beside being unbroken by rock or creek, the beach is of unusual width and smoothness and for decades has been one of the primary coast resorts of the North Pacific. It is dotted with vacation towns for its entire length, served with a highway and a railway which parallel the sea.

The Golden Trail

The earliest settlers in Clatsop County established their homesteads on Clatsop Plains, that rolling region of parallel ridges, smooth pastures, mottled with copses of evergreens, and flung down just behind the Clatsop beaches. They could have chosen no choicer place.

Some scores of years ago a Scotch settler caught the Old Country air of the Clatsop Plains and sent back to Scotland for some seeds of broom. The shrub has spread until today in the Clatsop Plains region it constitutes one of the most gorgeous floral spectacles in Oregon.

The blooming season of the Scotch Broom brings a glory to the Plains which words have never fit and have ever failed to mirror. Painters have gone to catch on canvas the glory of the scene and have refused to paint the whole, choosing only some isolated bush or clump, declaring, "To do on canvas what nature has done in flowers would be to invite incredulity and the scoff¬ ing of those who do not know this land''. So the Scotch Broom scoffs at words and flames in yellow laughter.

This peerless blooming shrub, lining as it does the Roosevelt Highway in the Plains sector, and all of the byways as well, has brought to this section of the great trunk road the name of "The Golden Trail".

The Mecca Of The Sportsman

CLATSOP'S CALL to the sportsman is a clear one. Here is big game, waterfowl, trout, upland birds, salmon, surf fishing, bass. For the milder pursuits there are clams, crabs, mussels along the beaches and a multi¬ tude of small game and fur animals in the forests.

Deer, bear, cougar, and bobcats challenge the hunter from the depths of the big woods. Where the forests come down close to civilization as they do in most parts of Clatsop County, the hunting is good and close at hand.

In the fall and winter the flocks of ducks which whistle over the lakes and marshes are famous far. The canvasback duck is the ruling favorite with the sportsman and the epicure.

But it is to the man of the rod and reel that Clatsop offers the greatest attractions. Here one fishes every month in the year, and here fish are of the finest.

The trout season opens in the early spring, when all of the scores of moun¬ tain streams tributary to the Columbia River and the sea lilt their summons to the fishermen. They are trout-ridden, and a state hatchery replenishes them annually with millions of young fish.

It is in the bigger, nobler, if not finer, fish that Clatsop stands out. There are many fishing regions up and down the world where excellent trout can be found, but the Royal Chinook salmon is native only to the Columbia River, while nowhere does the vicious steelhead grow larger or more courageous.

In the summer the fisherman puts out to sea off the mouth of the Co¬ lumbia River, where commercial trollers take tons of salmon on their spoons. With tackle adapted to sport rather than to profit, the most experienced angler finds a match for his best strength and keenest skill in the Chinook and Silverside salmon.

There is no grander sport in all the world than to have a 50-pound Royal Chinook salmon on light tackle with all the Pacific Ocean to fight him in.

This sport is still in its infancy, but it is yearly becoming more popular. Suitable boats are now available throughout the summer to take the fishermen to the salmon seas at a nominal cost. Fishermen now are coming from over the Northwest, and even from the East, to match their wits and wiles with the Lord of Salmon.

Then in the fall the salmon trout, in reality sea-run cutthroats, come swarming into the coastal streams bound for the spawning grounds and fur¬ nishing sensational sport at a time of year when the fishermen in less favored lands are laying their tackle by.

In the dead of winter, when the vast majority of American streams are locked in ice, or are closed by the restrictions of the law, the steelhead trout come home from their sojourn in the sea.

These great silver fish, weighing up to 20 pounds, and carrying in their shining bodies more of brilliant battle to the pound than any other fish of sea or stream or lake, come tearing into the Clatsop streams. They are a daring challenge to the fisherman. They are sport incarnate - and they come in Jan¬ uary and February.

The Land Of Lure For The Motorist

A Road Ribbon Girdling Rare Cliff's. 3. The Peerless Panorama from Clatsop Crest. 4 How A Fragment of the Golden Trail, b. IVorld-Famous IVidby Loops. 7. Tourist Auto Park.

The Motor-Land Superb

SINCE TIME BEGAN the Columbia River has swept down from her glacier cradle, bringing the richest elements from an empire to build up the farm lands of surpassing fertility about Astoria.

Since civilized history began in the Pacific Northwest, the Columbia River has brought men down to Astoria, building that city and its environs.

Today, more than ever before, a tide comes rolling down the river, a tide of humanity, rolling on rubber tires over one of the world's peerless highways paralleling the great stream down to Astoria and the sea.

The pathfinders of more than a century ago came to found an empire. The modern trailsmen come to find open days on open roads, natural beauty much as it was in the old, wild days, and to enjoy that empire.

There are lovely lands throughout all the Pacific Northwest, but there are few so well supplied as Clatsop County with the roads and highways which are the first concern of the gypsy of today.

Astoria stands at the crossroads. There two of the arterial highways of America converge. Not only are these primary roads in a national sense, but they are roads leading through a land so beautiful and located so sublimely that their fame spreads as their travelers scatter to the uttermost parts.

The Roosevelt Highway skirts the very edges of the coast from California to Astoria. It is not wholly completed yet, but it will be in a few years and even now it affords long, glorious surf-side stretches high above the beach, looping into the great Pacific Highway which parallels the coast through the heart of the hinterland.

The through tourist comes by the Columbia Highway and swings down the coast and back inland by the Roosevelt Highway, or crosses the Columbia to the Ocean Beach Highway of Washington and whirls away north through that state.

The exploring motorist comes to Astoria, makes it his base and spends a week on short trips out from the city, along the river, to the beach, into the mountains, through the great forests.

Stretch out your left arm, palm down, the fingers extended. The back of your hand is Astoria. The wrist leading to it is the Columbia River High¬ way, the greatest paved scenic road in the world. The Columbia Highway is unique and, as the wrist is the greatest of the elements reaching the hand, so the Columbia Highway is the primary factor of motoring ingress and egress for Astoria.

Each of the fingers stretches out as an essential element in the road system of Astoria's environs. The thumb is the route across the Columbia River, north to the beaches of Southwestern Washington, a wonderful district, which, though in another state, is primarily tributary to Astoria.

The index finger of your hand is the road to Warrenton, Clatsop County's growing commercial city on the Skipanon Waterway and the Columbia River. From Warrenton it runs to Hammond and Fort Stevens.

The second finger is the great Roosevelt Highway down the coast. It is the road to Gearhart, to Seaside, and to Cannon Beach. It does not even stop there, but runs on south along the Oregon coast to Tillamook, swinging back from there to Portland and making a splendid loop trip for the motorist.

There are two roads represented by the third finger. Both are paved. One taps the Lewis and Clark River valley, the other runs up the Youngs River valley. Here are rich dairy lands, fine farm regions, and out of the upper reaches of the two valleys comes untold timber wealth.

The little finger represents a road whose possibilities are anything but little. It is the Nehalem Highway and runs south from Astoria into the fertile Nehalem valley, traversing that farm and dairy region and emerging ultimately in the Willamette valley of Oregon.

A pioneer in the province of golfing, Clatsop County has held to the fore during all of the sensational rise of the game's popularity in the United States.

The links at Gearhart was famous on the Pacific Coast a quarter of a cen¬ tury ago. It comes as nearly being a natural links as God ever laid out. Today

Quite the opposite in composition is the Seaside course. In place of the long, open holes of the Gearhart links, which take their difficulty and charm from their very simplicity, the Seaside course wanders and hides among copses of evergreens, flashing across a lilting river, and haunting the golfer with its vagaries which require either cautious or consummately crafty golf.

The Astoria club course at Sunset Beach, however, is the queen of them all. Every community has a course which some famous player has likened to St.

Agricultural Clatsop

CLATSOP COUNTY, literally, is "a land flowing with milk and honey", for these are two of the important agricultural products - these and eggs and butter.

Have you nothing? You can get rich cut-over land for $10.00 an acre and can make your own farm. Hundreds of men are doing it today. They go into the country with nothing save their hands and make homes beside wide highways. This cut-over land is unexcelled for berries and for the raising of chickens. Thus a family's living is made and something laid by while the land is being cleared.

You are a farmer of only moderate means? Then Clatsop offers the same agricultural opportunity as any rich coastal country in a region where land is yet cheap, but where transportation and co-operation have made markets ex¬ ceedingly good.

You are a country gentleman of wealth? Then in Clatsop you may have picturesque rolling plains skirting the sea for your flocks and herds, or you may have tidelands of a richness comparable with the diked lands of Holland.

It is to the humble farmer, the home-seeker, that Clatsop County has its greatest appeal. As a land just coming into its agricultural development, it offers the shining chance of "growing up with the country".

Horace Greeley urged the young man so decades and decades ago, and in Clatsop the opportunity yet remains. Oldest American commonwealth on the Pacific Coast, it still is new.

Land Is Very Cheap

The poultryman in particular has a sterling opportunity. As has been said, cut-over hill land unsurpassed for egg production and near good high¬ ways can be secured for $10.00 an acre.

The man with next to nothing can establish himself upon rich diked tideland. Ten years ago William de Jong came with his family to Brownsmead, a district of reclaimed tideland near Astoria. He had $35.00 in the world. Today he is one of the outstanding successful farmers of Clatsop County. His children have been educated in college. His farm is equipped with every modern appliance and device.

Owing to the exceedingly mild and equable climate of Clatsop County, expensive buildings and farm establishments are unnecessary for the protec¬ tion of cattle, poultry and other flocks. Snow rarely covers the ground for a week during an entire winter. The coldest weather recorded in Astoria was

A Tide-Land Farm

8 degrees above zero, while the average minimum during the winter is about 16 degrees. Many parts of the county are even warmer. The maximum tem¬ perature recorded in Astoria as far back as the government records run is 96 degrees.

The Astoria Chamber of Commerce makes a specialty of assisting new settlers. It maintains a free land-listing service. Available farm lands are listed with it. The Chamber charges nothing for placing settlers upon suitable tracts. It is not in the real estate business and advises the newcomer honestly regard¬ ing land values and what he can expect to pay for certain property and make a reasonable return.

Expert, Scientific Aid

Not only is the settler assisted in becoming established, but public agencies aid him in making a success. Clatsop County maintains an unusually efficient county agricultural agent's office, which brings direct to the farmer trained counsel from one who makes a special study of the needs of the Clatsop agricu urist and who keeps him in contact, often personal contact, with the leading experts of the state, sent out by the state agricultural college.

This office is maintained jointly by the county, the state and the federal department of agriculture. It brings direct to the farmer the best advice of these three agencies.

The John Jacob Astor experiment station, located three miles from Astoria, is the state experiment station for the coastal region. It specializes in dairy investigations and in the development of crops and practices suited to the dairy industry of the Oregon coastal country.

Discoveries and methods evolved at this station have been and are con¬ tinuing to be of enormous benefit to the Clatsop farmer. The last state legis¬ lature took cognizance of the unusual contribution which this station has made to the prosperity of the entire coast district of Oregon and doubled its state appropriation.

Clatsop A Farm Homeland Hard By Astoria

It is not a stock land, where beef and only beef is raised. It is not a fruit land, where only fruit is grown and where a man's fortune is broken over¬ night by a single frost. It is not a wheat land, where a man must grow wheat or starve - and often grows wheat and starves, too.

Modern practice in the Astoria region leads the dairyman to heavy pro¬ duction of roots and ensilage, as well as hay, with the result that he purchases only a minimum of feed.

In whatever line of agricultural endeavor a Clatsop County farmer may specialize, he finds that other crops and other endeavors prosper as well, and that he is able to make a home and a living, as well as profits. He grows much of his family's food and is not forced to spend all he earns for the necessities of life.

Suppose a man be a dairyman in Clatsop County. Besides the cream which he sells and whence come his profits, he supplies his family with dairy products. The skimmed milk goes to invigorate his hens, and the family has eggs and meat. The farm garden produces lavishly, and he has vegetables.

Dairying Dominates Agriculture

In a country where the conditions of climate and soil are such as in Clat¬ sop County, dairying was foreordained to be the primary agricultural activity. In the very beginning of things it was so, for the natural elements in rural life about Astoria are such as to presuppose that milk production would prove the most profitable of all forms of rural activity. So it is.

Agricultural economists who have made a study of the situation declare that in Clatsop County the investment per head of cattle is as low as anywhere in the entire United States, and far lower than in most places.

First of all, the outstanding favorable factors in Clatsop's eminent position as a dairy region is that of climate. Clatsop winters are so mild that cattle pasture out of doors the year round. Snow lies on the ground for very few days of the year and the pastures are not killed by excessive frosts.

Root crops are allowed to remain in the field through the winter, being harvested only as they are needed. Expensive barns and other farm buildings are unnecessary because of the mildness of the weather.

At the same time, the summers are also favorable by their mildness. The pastures do not burn up. They remain bright and green throughout the hottest periods of the summer. Milk production is not cut by excessive heat.

While dairying is practiced with rich returns in all parts of Clatsop County, it reaches its acme on the deep, damp, rich alluvial tidelands along the Colum¬ bia River and its tidal tributaries.

Tidelands Are Unique

To the average farmer the mention of tidelands calls up a picture of flooding and of pumping for drainage, yet both of these are entirely unknown on Clatsop County tidelands.

Clatsop County s ' tidelands' deserve a word of their own. Students of agriculture have found them unique. They should not be confused with over¬ flow lands, nor with marshlands. They do not overflow when diked - and they are diked. They drain automatically through the action of the tide.

Tidegates, which are in reality huge valves, close when the tide rises, per¬ mitting no water to flow into the natural drainage sloughs. The ebbing of the tide permits the gates to open, allowing the accumulated drainage water to flow out.

In some senses the term tidelands is a misnomer. The river water outside the dikes is not salt. It is merely the back water from the immense flow of the Columbia River and is not affected by the tide to the point where it is even brackish.

The enormous size of the Columbia River estuary which these tidelands border, as well as the effect of the tide, makes flood danger or damage impossi¬ ble. Regardless of how great are the floods and freshets of the upper portions of the Columbia Basin, the floods are absorbed in the great reaches of the

7. 7,1 the Rich , Diked Browns, nead Country. 2. The Parent Plant of Oregon', Cooperative Success. 3. Here Ice Cream is King. 4. Dividend-returning Biddies. S. A Typical Clatsop Dairy.

estuary. Even though the increased water flow might be sufficient to iaise the level of the Columbia, tidal action prevents flooding, as the tide simply does not rise in the amount of the freshet's effect.

Irrigation is not practiced in Clatsop County, for two reasons - the ample rainfall and the moist nature of the tidelands. The average water table on these tidelands is three feet. On the uplands the rainfall is sufficient for all agricultural needs.

Rainfall Boon To Farmer

The Oregon coast has long been famous for its rain. The general impres¬ sion may have been gained that its rainfall is excessive and a drawback to agriculture. Quite to the contrary, it is a highly important factor in the very genuine success of Clatsop agriculture.

The richness of the tidelands provide a vast abundance of succulent feed. Production of roots, hay and ensilage reaches heavy averages. Two crops of hay are frequently cut.

Roots are grown universally. Rutabagas and mangels have a prominent place on every farm in the county and they afford excellent feed in very large quantities. Many Clatsop dairymen average 35 tons of roots to the acre, with yield of 40 tons by no means uncommon.

Many of the tideland districts actually prove too rich for some phases of crop production. In the growing of ensilage, for example, the crops grow so rank and to such extreme heights that they frequently must be cut before at¬ taining their full growth in order to keep them from falling. In the Brownsmead district progressive farmers fill 125-ton silos from six acres of oats and peas or oats and vetch.

The active, intelligent farmer on tideland can produce four tons of hay to the acre without difficulty. In many places two crops are cut each summer without irrigation. The universal practice is to pasture the meadows until late spring, to cut the hay in the early summer, and again to pasture the meadows throughout the balance of the year.

These examples of dairy crop production in Clatsop County are not based on isolated instances of superior yields, or upon "stunt" productions, but are an actual reflection of the results of intelligent farming in the splendidly pro¬ ductive tidelands which are found in the vicinity of Astoria.

Moreover, vast areas of these tidelands are yet available. Clatsop County is not supporting nearly its maximum of cows. The dairy business is growing rapidly and with increasing gains each year, due to the recent developments of stable and favorable markets.

Testing for tuberculosis has long been practiced in Clatsop County and now every animal in the county is tested annually. The result has been the practical eradication of bovine tuberculosis in the county and Clatsop is now a part of the largest tuberculosis-free area accredited by the United States De¬ partment of Agriculture.

There is no better testimony to the value and productiveness of these Clat¬ sop tidelands than that the federal farm loan board will loan $100 00 an acre on any of this tideland.

A Famous Farm Market

The dairy markets in Astoria are one of the brightest elements in the Clatsop dairyman's success. They have been developed within the past few years and have given a new impetus to the dairy industry. Through strict cream grading and the manufacture of quality-plus butter and ice cream, As¬ toria dairy products have achieved a distinctive name throughout the Pacific Coast and command a premium on the market.

Through the exercise of cream grading, Astoria plants have found it possi¬ ble to pay the dairyman well above the state's ruling market price for his butterfat. This premium is never-failing and runs from one to four cents a

Poultry Means Profits

Of all the agricultural enterprises of Clatsop County, poultry production is the most attractive to the man of moderate capital. The initial investment is slight, the harvest is quick and the return is sure for the poultryman who will work and who has had experience or will follow the trail blazed by hun¬ dreds of successful poultry growers who will be his neighbors.

The market for Clatsop County eggs is unlimited. It has been made so through the entrance of many of the larger egg-producers into the big North¬ west co-operative marketing organization, which opens to them all America as a market and which uniformly brings a higher average return than individual marketing.

In the five years from 1920 to 1925 the number of hens in commercial flocks in Clatsop County multiplied nine times and the progress is continuing steadily. The peak of favorable production is nowhere yet in sight and the prosperity of the poultrymen increases as their numbers grow.

Ten acres of logged-off land are ample for the man who would start a poultry ranch in Clatsop. Inasmuch as this logged-off land is very cheap, there is no reason why any poultryman should not have ten acres to start with.

The necessary buildings are very cheap, in view of the mild winters. Com¬ prising as it does one of the lumber centers of the world, Clatsop County af¬ fords the necessary lumber at a reasonable price. This soft, equable climate reacts in other directions to the benefit of the poultryman. Green feed is available the year around, as kale lives through the average Clatsop winter. At the same time, rape and such crops afford green feed in March and April when it is invaluable to the tiny chicks. During the most severe winter in the history of the poultry production as an important industry in Clatsop County, growers reported practically no falling off in winter production during the cold snap, while the price of eggs skyrocketed as a result of the severe blow dealt to egg production in other parts of the Northwest.

The mild summers at the same time are favorable to egg-laying, the hot¬ test summer weather having practically no effect upon the product of the flocks.

Cranberry culture is a highly specialized branch of Clatsop agricul¬ ture. Despite the high cost of bringing a cranberry plantation into profitable production, the business has grown by sensational strides.

The yield of the Clatsop County cranberry bogs is by far the highest in the United States, more than 500 bushels having been harvested from a single acre.

The West is greatly underproduced from a cranberry standpoint and only a small proportion of the cranberries consumed on the Pacific Coast yet are grown here. This insures a favorable market for the Clatsop product, which ranks in quality with the very finest of the East.

Clatsop Honey Nation-Known

Fireweed is a tall plant with a brilliantly beautiful pink bloom, which, by some strange freak of nature, flourishes best in the wake of fire. When the logged-off lands have been burned over, fireweed springs up in great profu¬ sion, affording bee pasture of extreme richness.

While Clatsop's fields and forests afford excellent bee pasture of other kinds, it is the fireweed which produces the heavy, fragrant, water-white, transparent and super-sweet honey which is carrying the name and fame of Clatsop throughout the country. This fireweed honey has peculiar character¬ istics of color, clarity and richness which have won for it the abiding admira¬ tion of connoisseurs.

It is only within the past few years that honey production has become a commercial business in Clatsop. It has only been recently that men have devoted themselves entirely to apiculture and have made their living at it.

Thanks to the fireweed and the high prices which its honey commands, the scientific bee-keeper prospers and advances in the favorable conditions which Clatsop affords. The nectar yield of the fireweed is unusual and very large production averages are the result. Herman Ahlers, dean of Clatsop bee¬ keepers, gets an average production, year in and year out, of over 150 pounds per colony. It is not considered at all unusual for a single colony to multiply five times during a summer, with the total honey production of the parent colony and its offspring reaching 600 pounds.

Vegetable Growing Comes Into Its Own

While vegetables, truck and small fruits have long been a staple product of Astoria's agricultural environs, they are now coming into their full import¬ ance with the establishment at Astoria of a large vegetable cannery as an adjunct of the Sanborn-Cutting Company's big salmon packing plant.

As may easily be surmised, Clatsop's deep, rich tidelands are producers of vegetables of exceptional quality and in enormous quantities. The same soil characteristics which produce heavy yields of root crops for dairy feeding also give unusual returns for the truck gardener and vegetable grower.

Astoria and the summer resorts have always been favorable markets for small fruits and vegetables, but the market situation in Astoria has been strengthened incalculably by the initiation of the cannery enterprise. This can¬ nery is being built up into a packing plant of real magnitude and, backed by strong resources and long experience in the canning business, together with the illimitable production possible on the thousands of acres of fertile tidelands, its future is assured and with it the future of Clatsop truck gardening.

The tidelands, the depth of whose soil has never been sounded, never become actually dry. They are composed of the rich elements washed down by the rivers through long ages. Their fertility is unplumbed and their possi¬ bilities as rich as their loam.

Here again the tidelands offer shining opportunity for the newcomer. The combination of this deep tideland and the berry-growing uplands, found in juxtaposition on so many Clatsop farms affords a valuable holding on which success for the active, progressive farmer is a certainty.

A Rare Rural Road System

Clatsop County's road system, and it is a system famous for its thorough¬ ness, even in Oregon, taps every agricultural portion of the county. Not only is the system one of comprehensive scope, but it is one of excellent roads.

With great paved highways on two sides of the county and with two more extending into its heart, the great majority of the farms of the county either touch a paved road or are within a mile of one or the other.

Not only do the farmers located off the paved highways have road facili¬ ties, but they have all-year roads, good roads, macadamized and maintained by the county engineering department.

Despite the heavy rainfall of the coastal region, these roads are always in good condition, always fitted for motor travel, and few indeed are the farmers of Clatsop County who do not own automobiles and trucks.

An Invitation

The Astoria Chamber of Commerce has prepared a number of booklets which elaborate upon the story and it will be glad to furnish you with them.

The Story of the Columbia River Salmon for those interested in these wonderful fish, their habits and the industry which brings them to the world's markets;