Sinking with fish or swimming with the tourists

As we’ve embarked on our travels throughout the Pacific Northwest, the contrast between big city and rural community has been stark. In South Bend, the community that John wrote about, one could hardly believe that just a couple hours in either direction were two metropolises. Even after departing Seattle, it only took minutes to feel like we were deep in the thick woods of the state’s rural areas. 

Though this is hardly a completely unique situation (driving through Pennsylvania, for example, one would be long gone from Philadelphia’s influence rather quickly), you start to wonder how Seattle and Portland’s respective reaches don’t feel more present driving through the rural communities of WA-03. 

One woman, a barista in Cathlamet, WA we’ll call Michelle, put very bluntly that their 532 person community is absolutely not Seattle. Her and her family, a husband and handful of children she home-schools, almost never go to the area’s cities. 

“We try to avoid them if we can, it’s just not really my thing.”

Conversely, it seems folks from Seattle and Portland aren’t exactly dying to interact with Cathlamet either. Michelle eventually conceded that very occasionally they’ll get a day tripper from Portland, but other than that, there’s a mutual avoidance going on between the region’s rural and urban areas. Many of the customers they do get are locals or tourists from the other rural parts of Washington. People are also moving into the region and finding their way to their coffee shop all the way from California, she says, a change that’s welcome depending on who you ask. 

Cathlamet, which sits on the Columbia River less than an hour and a half from Portland, happens to be the county seat in Wahkiakum County, an honor that feels a bit like a participation trophy given it’s the only town that’s even incorporated.

The biggest employer, Michelle says, “has to be the school, or maybe the county”. It’s definitely not big tech, like its Washington counterpart mega-city. But it’s also not fur trapping, the industry that initially put the town on the map as recently as 1907.

Many of the towns we visited felt like they were similarly positioned: soul searching to figure out what could make their communities thrive given the erasure of the bustling industries that gave way to their creation as recently as a century ago. 

“It’s just like the rust belt!”, one man, a landlord and real estate developer in the Portland area said describing the situation. More on him in a later post. 

A man we met in Astoria, Oregon put it bluntly: none of the cities and towns in this area are still working the jobs they were founded for. After all, South Bend, the town we had been in the day before, had certainly seen its hay day pass by as the logging and fishing industries dwindled into near erasure. Astoria, however, was a bright spot on a successful transition to an amenity tourism economy. 

Astoria is located at the mouth of the Columbia River as it meets the Pacific Ocean. The port city is a 10,000 person community that feels like it rests on the edge of the world. It can also boast a treasured history: founded in 1811, it is the first permanent American settlement west of the Rockies. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Astoria was a bustling community with significant industry coming from a few main sources: fur trapping, shipping, fishing, and logging. These mainstay industries got Astoria off the ground and built a thriving economy. 

And then a lot happened. Pacific salmon supplies dwindled and the Pacific Northwest struggled to compete with Asian imports. In the 1940s, one could find 30 canneries along Astoria’s land on the Columbia River. By 1975, there were zero. The other most employing industry, timber, suffered from a number of angles: Canadian competition, mechanization, environmental regulations, and more. 

Astoria, unlike many of the other communities, found a happy ending. 

“In the summer we get slammed,” recounted a server and aspiring Jazz singer that we met along the main strip in Astoria. 

“I’ll get to work to open up the restaurant and there will already be people in line waiting to come in.”

And it’s no surprise to hear that. The Astoria strip is loaded with unique bars, restaurants, museums and other landmarks. I was amazed walking through that only 10,000 people lived in the community year round.

Astoria successfully soul searched. It found tourism. There’s also a budding music scene. 

People are moving into Astoria, our friend at the restaurant told us, from all sorts of places. He’s from California and came here on the advice of a friend. He was astonished to find that, though the community by and large still was not “affordable” by any reasonable means, it was far superior to what he was paying in California. Plus, he ended up with a lucky deal on his studio. Whether he’s serving or singing, he’s a valuable member of the tourism industry and has made a life in Astoria as a result. 

Long Beach, a WA-03 community, found success doing the same. 

“It’s changed so much since I was a kid”, recalled a woman we met who lived just outside of Long Beach. “It’s so much more built out.”

Long Beach is a tourist destination, boasting long strips of beaches and fancy summer town aesthetics. 

She described a video she watched of the main strip from the 1980s. “Only one building on the whole strip is still the same!”. Similar to an earlier comment, those changes are welcomed, depending on who you ask, she says.