Elleda Wilson: A beautiful place
Mar. 30—The Daily Morning Astorian, April 1, 1885, described an afternoon excursion on the steamer Telephone, which was considered, at the time, to be the "fastest sternwheeler afloat."
The packed steamer left Astoria at 2 p.m., "skirted the Oregon side" and went up Knappa Slough to visit the "pretty little village of Knappa, that lies behind a high green mound on the river's bank." After a short stop, they swung across the main channel across to Cathlamet, Washington, where everyone went ashore.
"Cathlamet was looking its prettiest, which is saying a good deal," the reporter wrote. "It is an old, settled place, occupies a beautiful position and has a clean, thrifty look.
"Around that place cluster a host of old-time associations, from the times when the great chief made it his headquarters down to the days in the 1850s, when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant used to come down from Vancouver (where he was stationed at the fort there) to smoke a pipe with his old friend, James Birnie, once an Astorian ...
"Embowered in orchards rich in bloom, with the green hills sloping above it, and the broad Columbia sparkling in the sun below, it presents a lovely appearance and, as in groups the passengers returned laden with flowers, the universal exclamation was, 'What a beautiful place.'
"Shortly after five o'clock, the bow was turned homeward, and amid music from the grand piano in the ladies' cabin, and conversation, the time seemed short till she again rounded to her dock at Astoria ..." (Photo: Wahkiakum Chamber of Commerce)
