Алексис Мэтер стала новой королевой красоты конкурса «Мисс Орегон»

Water under the bridge Published 10:00 pm Sunday, July 5, 2026 10 years ago — 2016 SEASIDE — In its 70 years of existence, the Miss Oregon competition has brought bright gowns, flashing smiles and, for one young woman each year, the most coveted headwear in the state. At the end of Saturday evening, a packed Seaside Civic and Convention Center saw Alexis Mather join the “Miss O Sisterhood.” The Astoria native advanced to the pageant after earning the title of Miss Portland earlier this year. For Mather, the moment of being crowned came after years of preparation, as she has been competing in pageants since 2009. She was fourth runner-up last year as Miss Clatsop County “The credit goes to the volunteers of the organization,” Mather said. “I’ve always looked up to Miss Oregon and looked up to all the volunteers for what they do.” The North Coast was alive with rousing music, flamboyant colors and noisy festivities Monday. In Warrenton and Seaside, annual Fourth of July parades wound through the downtowns. As the day faded away, fireworks regaled the skies in Astoria, Seaside and the Long Beach Peninsula. On the first Sunday of every month, Karin Temple lays out a large mat at the Grace Episcopal Church on Franklin Avenue. Once completely unfolded, the 24-by-24-foot mat depicts a circular pattern of lines that wrap around the entire space. From 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., the labyrinth is open for anyone to walk it. Labyrinths can be traced back to various ancient civilizations through mythology and artwork, but have been adapted for modern nondenominational spiritual purposes. While appearing similar to mazes, they differ in that there are no dead ends. Instead, they are comprised of a unicursal path, meaning they will lead a traveler around the mat and eventually land them in the center. The Loyal Order of Moose was once a large organization among fraternal societies of the Oregon Coast. Make no mistake, the group is still very active in the community with social events, as well as fundraisers, but the number of engaged members who put on these events has diminished. The Moose Lodge isn’t the lone organization struggling with membership in the last decade. In a national trend reflected locally, many societies are failing to recruit young members. Some fraternities offer cash prizes to members who can recruit, while others are trying activities aimed at a younger demographic. Some worry, if they are unable to attract younger members, the lodges’ futures will be uncertain. The Moose, which was created in the 1800s, originally served as a gentleman’s social club. It was reinvented to become a group that would build a better society through charitable fundraisers and eventually create Mooseheart, a 1,000-acre campus close to Chicago that cares for children in need and provides a complete education free of charge. It runs entirely off of private donations and has taken in over 12,000 kids since 1913. 50 years ago — 1976 The world’s greatest seaport. That was what thousands of Astorians imagined was being born when they gathered at Smith Cove to watch a piling driven in the tide flats on a June day in 1914. It was the first piling for Pier 1 of the Port of Astoria, the world’s greatest seaport of the future. The notion still lingers in the backs of some Astorians’ minds, but the realities of physics and economics have prevented the “superport” from developing. But a port did develop around that first piling and it has survived, sometimes thriving and sometimes faltering, through several generations of port commissioners, staff, longshoremen and shippers. Today the goals of Port of Astoria officials perhaps are more modest than those of the port’s infancy, but they still are ambitious. Astoria, as Oregon’s oldest city, has had much experience in staging major celebrations of the 100th or 150th anniversaries of historic events. The centennial or sesquicentennial anniversary of something or other seems to come along every few years. Astoria’s first experience with such an occasion was in 1876 when the city put on a festive celebration of the nation’s Centennial. There was a popular contribution of funds averaging 50 cents for each of the city’s 1,200 inhabitants, which financed a banquet attended by 2,000 visitors from out of town and featuring a barbecued ox, and which financed also a procession and a regatta. There was a prize of $1,000 for the winner in a race of some 200 to 250 fishing boats. The banquet featured “literary exercises by our learned and eloquent men, including a poem by a gentleman known to be fully competent.” Lou Ann Thorsness and Kathy Pritchet probably meet more people than just about anybody in Astoria. It’s their job, as the Astoria Area Chamber of Commerce’s representatives at the Astoria Column tourist information booth. They know they’ve said “hello” to more than 1,000 people since they opened the booth for the season June 14. That’s how many have signed the guest book, and only about a fourth of the people who visit the Column sign the book. The young ladies at the column answer questions, hand out information brochures, give directions, sell candy and souvenirs and offer just about any other kind of help they can to travelers. “When did it stop being used as a lighthouse?” is the most common question about the column asked by visitors this year, Miss Thorsness said. OYSTERVILLE, Wash. — Charming old Oysterville, the northernmost town on the scenic finger of the Long Beach Peninsula, will be the scene of what promises to be one of Sunday’s biggest and best bicentennial celebrations. The old road winds along Willapa Bay, which was called Shoalwater Bay in Oysterville’s heyday as the oyster canning capital of the world, until it reaches a complex of historic structures at the north end of town. It is anchored on the south by the aging Baptist church built by one of Oysterville’s two founders, R.H. Espy, and on the north by the big Barham Dairy barn and old Northern Oyster Company cannery. 75 years ago — 1951 If you live along the coast in Clatsop County and see a man digging on your property, he isn’t necessarily digging for gold or for clams. He may be Lloyd Collins, youthful archaeologist for the University of Oregon, who is prospecting for old Indian sites. Since June 16, Collins has been digging for old Indian habitation sites along the Oregon coast. So far, he hasn’t had too much luck. “Most of the sites have already been bulldozed flat by logging operators,” Collins explains. “I’ve found a few Indian artifacts, from old Clatsop tribes, but not many. One place where Collins discovered an old site was in the Lewis and Clark river area, on old Fort Clatsop road. There a log had been dragged through the mud by a logging concern, revealing five sites, one atop of the other. The top was an old pioneer habitation, the bottom four, Indian. A West Kelso man, trapped overnight by high tide on a rock in Beard’s Hollow near Long Beach, walked off at low tide at 4:40 a.m. today, unharmed but hungry. Earlier, the Cape Disappointment Coast Guard had taken a second man off the rock by firing a line to him last night, and tossing him a life preserver. A third man, who had been fishing with the group, had gotten off yesterday before the tide came in. All were from West Kelso. The second spent the night on the rocks when darkness and high tide made it impossible to further aid him. Two Berkeley, California girls were in Astoria Monday demonstrating how to travel 3,000 miles over a period of 70 days for only $200 a person. The girls, Alice Jensen, 24, a senior at the University of California, and Margaret Fischer, 24, a California graduate, are making the trip on bicycles. The girls had been on the road 2 ½ weeks when they arrived in Astoria Sunday night. They rode their lightweight bicycles, equipped with reduction gears for hill-climbing, all the way from Portland by way of hHighway 30 Sunday, leaving that city at 6 a.m. “It was a bit hilly,” Alice remarked. The Navy’s defense construction program on the West Coast got formally underway Monday afternoon at Astoria Marine Construction company’s Lewis and Clark River shipyard. The occasion was the keel laying of the first of two 165-foot minesweepers to be built by the war-tested Astoria firm for the Navy. First calf of the artificial insemination program of the Clatsop County Dairy Breeders association was born June 10 on the Joel Sarkie farm in Brownsmead. Behind that announcement lies nine years of experimentation and research by progressive dairymen in all parts of the state, aided and assisted by technicians of Oregon State college. Monthly arrest totals hit their lowest mark of the year according to the monthly report compiled by city police officers. The report revealed that 165 persons were arrested during the month as compared to 230 in May and 190 in April, the previous low for the year. Minor parking violations accounted for more than half of the month’s arrests when 96 persons violated parking rules.