29 minute read
Quips & Quotes
A Century on the LongView THE
Lower Columbia
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UIPS & QUOTES
Selected by Debra Tweedy After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations. --Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright, 1854-1900. Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. --Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, 1872-1933 Ring out the false, Ring in the true. --Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ºEnglish poet, 1809-1892 Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage. --Susan Sontag, American writer and political activist, 1933-2004 He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. --Ben Franklin, American statesman, writer, inventor, 1706-1790 Life admits not of delays; where pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. –Samuel Johnson, English writer, 17091784 It is a great thing when two souls are united to support each other in their work, in their successes and misfortunes, until the last silent minutes of the last good-bye. --George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), English novelist, 1819-1880
Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. --Erich Fromm, German psychologist, psychoanalyst and writer, 1900-1980
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever. --Neil Gaiman, English writer, 1960“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone, and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.” --J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, British author, 1965-
Longview native Debra Tweedy has lived on four continents. She and her husband decided to return to her hometown and bought a house facing Lake Sacajawea.“We came back because of the Lake and the Longview Public Library,” she says.
Samantha Farland
As a Christian athlete I glorify God by remaining humble and treating others with kindness on the court. No matter the “ outcome of the game it’s important to me to radiate his light through my attitude and effort. Before the game my friend and I lead our team in prayer for a safe and successful game. It’s an honor to play for an audience of one!”
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The Guts, the Gamble, the Glory
people+place
then: building bridges now: the crossroads
The Lower CoLumbia’s pioneers were starry-eyed visionaries with mud on their boots.
They regarded these mighty lands and waters with a mixture of awe, respect and fear. The Great River of the West demanded no less. Stewart Holbrook memorably described the Columbia as, “Not a cozy river, not the kind a man can feel belongs to him.” Beware, said the skeptics: Build your mansions and estates on the tranquil banks of the Hudson, meander your way down the Mississippi with the riverboat captains and their cotton bales, swoon over and serenade the Swanee. But pay heed to the humbling Columbia: She will sink your ships, rot your crops, and flood your puny settlements, as regularly and inevitably as the seasons.
Longview’s founders were not unaware of this reputation. But they were also products of the Roaring Twenties and the Aspirin Age, as Holbrook reminds us, seemingly capable of anything they set their minds to. So they made a big bet, securing an isolated, swampy delta with a history of natural disasters and displacements on which to situate their giant mills and planned city. They were prescient, these audacious pioneers. They looked past the past and muddled through the present with a dream of a future they might create for generations to come. Their bet paid off. They defied the skeptics, overextended their capital and exhausted their energies on behalf of this particular forlorn piece of real estate. Their guts and experiences guided them. Their rationale would evolve over a hundred years and become a real estate agent’s modern mantra. Location, location, location.
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1923 – 2023
The Long View project pairs history with modern context. To celebrate Longview’s 100th birthday, Columbia River Reader is expanding its monthly “People+Place” feature to contrast the historical “Then” with the contemporary “Now.”
“It’s important to look back and celebrate the past,” said publisher Susan Piper, “but equally important to track the changes that make us what we are today. How close are we to the founders’ vision? What remains? What’s entirely new?”
Thanks to tremendous community support (see Partner Spotlights, page 26), the Reader will present 12 months of “People+Place Then and Now” reportage, then combine and expand these features into a commemorative book. The Long View: A Planned City and America’s Last Frontier written by Hal Calbom, with a foreword by John M. McClelland, III.
The Reader is coordinating with the Longview Centennial Committee, led by Reed Hadley, to publicize civic activities and celebrations (see Centennial Countdown, page 26) and will host a Book Launch Gala June 30, 2023.
THEN AND NOW 1. Developing Dreams 2. Empire of Trees 3. Heavy Lifting 4. Work Force 5. Waste Not, Want Not 6. Telling Stories 7. Transport and Trade 8. Power and Energy 9. Education for All 10. Sustaining the Spirit 11. Health and Wellness 12. Dreams Developing
Transport and Trade 7.
THEN
Local and global: Trade and transportation are immediate concerns for the new town.
NOW
In the Pacific Century, Longview is a crossroads for local, regional, and international commerce.
people+ place then
Building Bridges
Longview’s has been a local story with national, even global implications. Physically remote, the town nevertheless had a wider presence from its very inception. Boastful media and promotion blanketed the country and trumpeted the Planned City. If the new enterprise were to prosper, the product it produced locally — lumber by the millions of board feet a day — would need to be marketed and distributed literally THE STORM-SWOLLEN COWLITZ around the world. HURLED LOGS AND DEBRIS There would be fits and starts. The nation’s largest lumber company, AGAINST THE BRIDGE SUPPORTS located half a continent away, was making hasty decisions and plans that could feel over-the-top, misjudged and arbitrary. Still, how many isolated mill towns ever enjoyed these farsighted and deep-pocketed resources? A wealthy, benevolent corporation as its parent? National figures such as Olmsted and Kessler and Nichols directing its birth and infancy? The world’s eyes fixed upon them and their prospects? Before the first shovel of earth moved in the Cowlitz delta, the founders had a global business plan for Longview. World’s
Largest Sawmills or no, this venture would live or die by transport and trade. cont page 19
You don’t build the nation’s largest lumber company without chutzpah, market savvy, and aggressive sales tactics. Though Longview’s founders occasionally showed their naïveté as city planners and builders, they were first-class salesmen and marketers. And the time was right.
It was conceived and whelped in what has been called the Aspirin Age of the 1920s, a time of marvels without end, when not even the sky was the limit, when normalcy was near to fantasy, and Men of Vision were as highly regarded as were the Old Testament prophets in biblical times. Stewart Holbrook
The Columbia The founders knew their markets and their potential customers. What worried them was transportation and trade: serving these markets efficiently and economically. Getting from here to there — point A to point B, mill-to-customer — was a much more daunting prospect viewed from the country’s far corner than it had been from its heartland.
The Confluence
In an age dominated by ships and railroads, the founders knew the value of a deep water port, especially one serviced by rail. They had first planned to build two mills, one to serve the oceanic export side exclusively. Instead they chose a single site — the confluence of two formidable bodies of water and with deep water access — in a significant act of foresight. In 1920 — 13 years before Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin project began — the remarkable Wesley Vandercook revealed a vision of the future:
The government has a reclamation project on which they proposed to spend $300 million to reclaim about 2 million acres of land for farming and incidentally develop 1 million horsepower of hydroelectric power.
Looking a long way into the future, it may prove that the great profit from the proposed operations will come not from the manufacture of lumber but from taking advantage of these increased land values.
Vandercook Report, 1920 The proposed Hayden Island site would have forever made them beholden to Portland and Vancouver; The Warrenton / Astoria location was too far from the
Photos: Facing page: “Allen Street Bridge collapse,” courtesy of Cowlitz County Historical Museum; this page: Opening Day of the Port of Longview, courtesy of Longview Public Library.
timber itself. By gambling on a “twofer,” serving both the domestic and foreign markets from the same site in the Cowlitz delta, the founders went all-in, gambling on their ability to transport and to trade from this single central location in mid-river. The site would challenge even the most ambitious engineers and planners.
Wake of the Floods
The founders soon discovered why their “flood plain delta” still sat relatively untamed and unsettled in the early 1920s. Most days the Great River of the West and its cousin, The Cowlitz, ran gently by the future Planned City, but could be fearsome beasts when riled up. And these uprisings were written in area history and bitter experience. The delta had hosted native peoples for centuries, of course, but it was a seasonal, transient home base. Tribes were ever alert to the fierce and fickle rains, storms and floods. Later, in the 1800s white settlers watched in terror as their more “permanent” attempts at settlements washed away, their investments sunk. Even the site of the famous Monticello Convention, which had called for the separation of the Oregon and
cont page 22
Michael & Marilyn Perry
Proposed new bridge connecting Longview and Rainier
It’s always good to know where you’re going
Sign of the Times: Finding one’s way north approaching Longview.
from page 19 Washington Territories in 1852, had been obliterated in an 1867 flood and now lies buried underneath a dike in present-day Longview. To move people, machinery and automobiles, the founders first needed simply to cross the Cowlitz River. And, given the almost instant, bitter rivalry with Kelso, that would prove more easily said than done. Cooperation and agreement became virtually impossible and proposed bridge building plans stalled repeatedly. Both sides would persistently underestimate the logistical and engineering challenges. They would pay dearly for their indecision and overconfidence.
Disaster
The first wooden bridge crossing the Cowlitz from east Kelso to what was then the village of Catlin was built in 1904 and lasted two years, knocked down by winter floodwaters. Its replacement, built in 1906, was still in use, terribly deteriorated, when Longview started up in the 1920s. By the end of 1922, a new steel drawbridge was finally under construction, beside its rickety predecessor, but automobile traffic increased the strain on the rotting, one-lane wooden structure.
Photos, this page: Longview-Rainier Ferry. Colossal newly-sawn timbers ready for shipment by rail. Facing page: Pioneer Bridge, lower Cowlitz River, under construction. Early Longview
transit bus. All photos courtesy of longview public librAry. Crowds gathered on New Year’s Day 1923 as the storm-swollen Cowlitz, running “savagely” in the words of one writer, hurled logs and debris against the bridge supports. Pedestrians grew wary but traffic continued as normal, until two days later, January 3rd:
Suddenly a cable supporting the center of the bridge snapped. Those walking across who could escape ran frantically to safety. A.B. Little, who later became a state patrolman, saw the danger and threw his car into reverse, backing up against those behind him. He yelled and waved his arms until his car and at least four other cars backed off in time. About a dozen cars were not so lucky. Virginia Urrutia
They Came to Six Rivers The suspension span flipped over, throwing cars and screaming pedestrians into the turbulent river and flotsam below.
The scene was quickly one of panic. Screams of victims were heard two blocks away. The cars that fell sank quickly to the bottom, past the tangle of bridge cable and timbers, and it was never determined precisely how many lives were lost. The known count was 19. John M. McClelland, Jr.
R.A. Long’s Planned City
Bridge Politics
Even this shock and staggering loss of life couldn’t quell the animosity and petty feuding between Kelso and the upstarts across the river. Traffic on the new Allen Street bridge was often slowed by incessant (and allegedly intentional) railroad traffic on the Kelso side of the river. And when S.M. Morris and other founders decided to bridge the lower Cowlitz (the Pioneer Bridge built in 1926) the move was vilified in Kelso as bypassing and cutting off their city. Which is exactly what it did.
To make the matter clear, a direction sign was posted at the wye that made motorists believe the shortest way to Seattle was through Longview. Kelso retaliated by putting a sign south of that sign that would persuade motorists not to be seduced into thinking a detour to the left would be the way to go north to Seattle.
Virginia Urrutia
They Came to Six Rivers
cont page 21
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from page 20 Squabbling over another proposed bridge project — a grand span of the Columbia planned between Longview and Rainier — would draw even bigger competition into a fight: from the United States Department of War to the city fathers of the feisty metropolis upstream, Portland. The Columbia It should come as no surprise that the leader of the Longview faction advocating for the bridge was the indispensable Wesley Vandercook. It can be said in fairness that beyond Long-Bell’s immediate self interest there existed a grander vision among R.A. Long and his captains, a larger and longer view, appropriate for their namesake town.
Vandercook and company began to see that the Columbia River at Longview could become a premier port, not only for Long-Bell, but for the industries. But this would require roads and bridges. Long’s intent was to connect the city to the outside world by routing as much traffic as possible through Longview.
Marc Roland
“Vandercook’s Bridge,” unpublished essay for Master’s degree coursework, Portland State University
Battle of the Heavyweights
The Longview faction used its worldliness to its advantage. Among their most adroit strokes was enlisting the engineering services of the estimable Joseph Baermann Strauss, designer of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. He came with local knowledge, too, having designed Portland’s Burnside Bridge, which would be built in 1926.
Portland enlisted allies in the United States War Department, who testified that the 155-foot clearance specified in early designs might impede the passage of warships. Months, years of hearings and debates ran on and on. Proposals were bandied back and forth, including building a tube tunnel under the river. When a
The Roads, the Rivers, and the Rails
One hundred years of distance can cause us to idealize things: assembling a rosy history out of grand visions, selfless labors, heroic dreamers and idealists. On closer inspection the opposite can reveal itself: mean-spiritedness, self-interest and crooked dealings abound, too. In Longview’s first few decades, no debates were as heated, or the antagonists so entrenched, as those over transportation. Perhaps because the stakes were so high and the authority so hazy: Roads connected population centers with heavily vested interests, often across state lines; Rivers were the critical links to livelihood, to commerce and commodities; The rails often started it all, first on the scene and usually the products of land grabs, speculation, robber barons, and political graft.
Portland did not want a bridge there. It would, according to horrified spokesmen for the river’s metropolis, be a grave obstruction to traffic on the lower Columbia. All of the Portland papers, except The Oregonian, referred to Longview as the “synthetic city.” Portland’s mayor declared
“we must win in order to protect Portland and the Columbia Basin” from this dreadful span. Stewart Holbrook
cont page 23
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from page 23 compromise was finally agreed upon, which required authorization by the United States Congress, the city was required to build what at that time would become the largest cantilever bridge in the world, with an astonishing clearance of 195 feet. And therein lies a tale.
In 1925, the only ships that tall were tall-masted clipper ships. But Portland was able to get the
War Department (today’s Department of Defense) to require the bridge be tall enough to allow any U.S. Naval ships to pass under it. Portland knew the USS Constitution’s main mast required 195 feet of clearance. Michael O. Perry
Columbia River Reader, May 15, 2012 No doubt delighted by throwing up this considerable obstacle — adding forty feet of height to the bridge would cost a cool $2 million added to an already heavy price — the Oregonians congratulated themselves on their ploy. Rotting away in the Boston Navy Yard, “Old Ironsides” was unlikely to see sea duty soon, but maintained her commission and active status in the U.S. Navy.
The founders persevered. On March 29, 1930, the LongviewRainier Bridge, at the time the world’s highest and longest — yet another Longview superlative — opened for business.
Two Ports, Poor Sports
More wrangling, finagling and politicking birthed the Port of Longview, which began life as the Port of Kelso. Port Districts are public entities, subject to control by commissions, regulations, and political sway. Though it would grow into a thriving deep water destination on the Columbia, the public port’s development was relatively slow. The major industries on the river had more than adequate pier facilities of their own — Long-Bell’s alone had berthing space for four ocean-going ships at a time. The attractiveness of the river’s edge deep water access was instrumental in luring both Longview Fibre Company and Weyerhaeuser to Longview to land not under Port of Kelso (it would become Port of Longview in 1929) control. Still the Port fight raged and distracted through the 20s and featured the emergence of a genuine scoundrel, one A. Ruric Todd, who played on Kelso-Longview antipathy and eventually even conned his way into election as Mayor of Kelso. A successful recall effort only complicated the situation, which turned tragic. Virginia Urutia:
Never had Cowlitz County seen more problems with an official that those Todd stirred up in the short time he was in office brewing those problems. The recall vote did not quite end the turmoil. Thomas Dovery was editor of the strongly pro-Todd Cowlitz County
cont. page 25
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cont. page 22
News. One dark night when he was returning from a meeting of the pro-Todd organization, the Public
Welfare League, someone shot him. Todd and his supporters quickly assumed that the murder was an act of vengeance against the editor for defending
Todd.
Some months later the case was solved by a Seattle criminologist. Robbery, not political revenge, was the motive, and eventually the out-of-town criminals confessed and were tried.
In for the Short Haul
The fleeting nature of Pacific Northwest history, its “telescoping” as one writer calls it, cuts our Railroading Era substantially down to size.
The history that elsewhere required from two hundred to three hundred years for its unfolding was in the Northwest compressed to much less than a century. Stewart H. Holbrook
The Far Corner Most certainly a railroad terminus, and railway connections, were a pre-requisite as the founders looked over various sites. But they soon encountered different circumstances of topography, population and transportation which changed their calculations. What was needed, and what quickly emerged, a practical “mosquito fleet” of one-horse rail routes, ingenious little engines that could, and the endless practicality and inventiveness of the loggers and lumbermen. Even the predecessors of today’s parallel rail routes up and down the Columbia Gorge were short-range portages, 4-5 miles, around Cascade Locks and Celilo Falls. Rather than two or three huge companies laying hundreds of miles of tracks, Pacific Northwest railroading became hundreds of companies, big and small, blazing, exploiting, then abandoning dozens of short-haul routes.
The Grand Destination
These utilitarian fixes, of course, didn’t slake the founders’ relentless hunger for credibility and the grand gesture. Whether they really needed one or not, they’d build a magnificent railroad station and figure out what to connect it to later.
Longview was a remote destination, not a way station. There was little Northwest population demanding to be shuttled back and forth. The visions of the great transcontinental railroads, spanning hundreds of miles, simply didn’t apply in such primitive territory. Not yet.
Long’s generation loved America’s trains, and no city of stature was thought to be complete without an impressive depot as an entrance into town. Longview gained a passenger depot that would have been extraordinary for a town three times its size. Lenore Bradley
Robert Alexander. Long On July 13, 1928, thousands turned out to greet the first passenger train into town, the Great Northern No. 458 from Portland to Seattle. Six bands played, whistles blasted, and fireworks lit the sky. Unfortunately, maintenance of the rail service proved high and revenue from fares low, and, according to Lenore Bradley:
It was not long before the three main carriers regretted their decision to run trains into Longview. Then nature seemed to conspire to bring about the station’s demise. The Cowlitz flooded, washing out the draw span on the THEY’D BUILD A MAGNIFICENT railroad bridge. Long-Bell had sold its logging road RAILROAD STATION AND FIGURE to the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Great OUT WHAT TO CONNECT IT TO LATER Northern in 1930, so passenger trains stopped at Longview no more.
Their impeccable station, resplendent in its Tuscan Italianate style, was converted into a facility for Cowlitz General Hospital, then vacated in 1968.
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The Monticello Convention resulted in the creation of a new territory that became Washington State. Historical marker near Longview L:ibrary.
Transport and Trade 7. people+ place now
THEN
Local and global: Trade and transportation are immediate concerns for the new town.
NOW
In the Pacific Century, Longview is a crossroads for local, regional, and international commerce.
The Crossroads
It’s remarkable that transportation — which proved so difficult to establish and maintain at Longview’s birth — is today so critical to the city’s continued success. Unlike many decaying sawmill towns that withered when logging and lumbering slowed, Longview bustles with local motion. Certainly it’s built a thriving wood products business in the wake of sawmilling’s demise. But it flourishes also as a connection hub, a regional crossroads, thanks in large part to the visionary founders and their instinct for confluence. The Columbia River, now officially a federal highway, teems with local, national and international commerce, served by Longview’s deepwater port and prized waterfront. Two railroads shuttle cargo and passengers in and out of town, the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific. Longview sits adjacent to the major interstate highway linking Canada and Mexico, LONGVIEW BUSTLES 45 miles from one commercial airport and 90 miles from another. WITH LOCAL MOTION And if you’re flying for pleasure or commuting by corporate jet, the Southwest Washington Regional Airport nestles comfortably next to the Cowlitz River, a stone’s throw from town. Longview is much more than on the beaten track. It owns a good share of it, and thrives as a modern crossroads for trade and transportation.
Port of Longview is an inter-modal connection point for water-borne grain, railway links, and even wind tower components bound for the Columbia Gorge.
Jeff Wilson
Commissioner, Port of Longview
THE PUBLIC’S PORT
In 1911, the Washington state Legislature passed the Port District Act, and the Port of Kelso (located in present day Longview) was founded in 1921. Previous to going public, ports — like utilities and other key services — were private ventures often subject to mismanagement and graft. “Mr. Long got it right,” said Longview Port Commissioner Jeff Wilson, “Longview must have a public port, and in 1921 we founded one.” Previously private monopolies controlled access to the waterfront, so creation of public ports became a progressive policy decision, not just a land grab. That public port district formally became Port of Longview in 1929. Wilson points out that the Port is a “neighbor and economic partner in the community,” and collects and pays taxes on its operations. Governed by a board of three elected Commissioners, the Port of
Longview, as a non-container Port, provides valuable specialized services on the competitive, and very busy,
Columbia River.
“We’re a niche because we fill that need for break bulk,” said Wilson. “Food, grain, steel are all ‘break bulk’ items.” The Port also handles dry bulk commodities like calcified coke, potash and soda ash, all critical to manufacturing economies regionally and even internationally, and so-called project cargo items such as heavy machinery, industrial parts, and wind tower components.
Jeff Wilson, Port of Longview Commissioner
“Our profit is returned into the community’s benefit,” said Wilson. “R.A. Long had it right, as he did with so many other things. Longview needs this Port,” he concluded, “and we expect to be here for another hundred years.”
TAKING FLIGHT
“We’re the only jet-capable airport in Southwest Washington,” said Chris Paolini, airport manager. “People fail to realize that we’re a genuine part of the transportation infrastructure.”
FLOATING IN THE Twenty percent of the aircraft based at Southwest Washington Regional Airport AIR...WHAT’S MORE are used for business, the remainder devoted to civil aviation and flight MAGICAL THAN THAT? instruction. This business-friendliness has proved attractive, especially with so many of Longview’s core industries now nationally or internationally corporate-owned. Local EDC and
Development pros cite the “jet-factor” as a crucial benefit for today’s mobile executives.
Paolini, an upbeat Californian, is himself an advertisement for the airport and its environs. “I escaped the concrete jungle to this beautiful green area, and I love it.” A Pomona
College business grad, he was bitten by the airplane bug early, and is still infected,”My parents would give me a gas station lego kit and I’d tear it apart and make it into an airplane.”
The airport is a publicly-owned entity which contracts with
Cascade Air, a fixed base operator, to run it. With fifty names on the waiting list for hangar space, expectations for the future are sky high. Said Paolini, “Seeing the world from Chris Paolini
God’s perspective, floating in the air, what’s more magical Manager, Southwest than that?” Washington Regional Airport USS Constitution under full sail (Artists’ rendering)
OLD IRONY SIDES
CONTINUING HISTORY
It’s almost too good to be true. Those inventive obstructionists from Portland get their comeuppance. Local historian Michael Perry relishes the tale: Old Ironsides — the U.S.S. Constitution — meets its potential nemesis, the Big Bridge. “In 1924, the ship was found to be in an advanced state of decay. Congress authorized a complete restoration, and much of the needed money came from 10 million school children who donated to the project,” said Perry. Once returned to condition, the Constitution began a tour of U.S. waters to celebrate its revival, under tow, not sail, (Annapolis hadn’t turned out reefers, trimmers and steerers for well over a century). “Old Ironsides visited many port cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in 1931 and 1932,” said Perry. “In the spring of 1933, after being OLD IRONSIDES’ NEW MASTS towed through the Panama Canal, the ship worked its way CLEARED THE BRIDGE DECK up the Pacific coast.” The two men who led the privately-funded effort to WITH JUST FIVE FEET TO SPARE Toward the end of its celebratory cruise, she was scheduled to preserve Long-Bell’s historic Shay Locomotive call it a part visit, of all places, Portland, of our “continuing history,” which must be renewed and refreshed if it’s not to be lost. Oregon, (assuming, perhaps, that city’s affection for the “The locomotive is amazing in itself,” said Jeff Wilson, who along with John Chilson and hundreds of volunteers helped accomplish this historic preservation, “but the four ship was untainted by self-interest), by way of Longview and beneath its newly-minted Longview-Rainier bridge. True to specification, “Old Ironsides’ new masts cleared the 195-foot high Longview Bridge deck with just five feet to spare,” said Perry, a most unlikely, and apt, proof of concept. interpretive panels that surround the On its way back downstream the historic ship paused display are important too, our local at Kalama, then spent four glorious days in Longview beginnings right there to remind us.” beginning August 23, 1933. During her stay she was visited by more than 25,000 enthusiastic citizens, twice the city’s Ephraim Shay perfected a design for a population at the time, strolling her historic old decks under “geared locomotive” in the late 1800s, the shadow of their shiny new bridge.and by 1924 Long-Bell was a customer. The Shays were especially suited to mining, logging and industrial operations where the track could be steep or of poor quality. “Longview is completely unique, our own Planned City,” said Wilson, whose restoration efforts preceded his election as Port Commissioner. “We are what we are, old enough Hal Calbom is a third generation to respect, yet young enough to be open to future possibilities. Our claim to fame is Longview native who works in public measured in more than historical time.” affairs television and educational publishing. This is his fifth year Wilson and his fellow restorers see this continuing history influencing generations to photographing and writing Columbia come, a process of not just restoration and respect, but of adaptation and change. River Reader’s People+Place feature. Reach him at hal@halcalbom.com.
