Union Fishermen's Cooperative Packing Company Alderbrook Station | |
The boat and net storage shed, Alderbrook Station's largest building, in 2012 | |
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| Location | 4900 Ash Street Astoria, Oregon |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 46°11′49″N123°46′57″W / 46.19680556°N 123.7824889°W Coordinates: 46°11′49″N123°46′57″W / 46.19680556°N 123.7824889°W |
| Area | 4.5 acres (1.8 ha) |
| Built | c. 1903 [1] |
| Built by | Kankkonen, Frank |
| Architectural style | Other, Vernacular utilitarian |
| NRHP reference # | 91000053 [2] |
| Added to NRHP | February 20, 1991 |
Union Fishermen's Cooperative Packing Company Alderbrook Station, on the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon, was built in 1903. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1991. The listing included three contributing buildings and another contributing structure on a 4.5-acre (1.8 ha) area. [2]
The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the US state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is 1,243 miles (2,000 km) long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven US states and a Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any North American river entering the Pacific.
Astoria is a port city and the seat of Clatsop County, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1811, it is the oldest American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains and the oldest city in the state of Oregon. Astoria is located on the south shore of the Columbia River, where the river meets the Pacific Ocean. The city is named for John Jacob Astor, an investor from New York City whose American Fur Company founded Fort Astoria at the site. Astoria was incorporated by the Oregon Legislative Assembly on October 20, 1876.
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property.
The Union Fishermen's Cooperative Packing Company dates from 1896. Founded in 1896 "by a group of gillnetters aiming to gain more control over market and working conditions", the company built a cannery and two stations, this one in Alderbrook and another in Uppertown. These stations served members, mostly Finns and Scandinavians, who lived in Alderbrook and Uppertown neighborhoods. "At these stations, the gillnetters could unload their catches at receiving stations at the pierhead, find secure moorage close to their homes, and have ready access to storage and repair facilities." [1]
Gillnetting is a common fishing method used by commercial and artisanal fishers of all the oceans and in some freshwater and estuary areas. Gill nets are composed of vertical panels of netting that hang from a line with regularly spaced floaters that hold the line on the surface of the water. The floats are sometimes called "corks" and the line with corks is generally referred to as a "cork line." The line along the bottom of the panels is generally weighted. Traditionally this line has been weighted with lead and may be referred to as "lead line." A gill net is normally set in a straight line. Gill nets can be characterized by mesh size, as well as colour and type of filament from which they are made. Fish may be caught by gill nets in three ways:
- Wedged – held by the mesh around the body.
- Gilled – held by mesh slipping behind the opercula.
- Tangled – held by teeth, spines, maxillaries, or other protrusions without the body penetrating the mesh.
Only the 1903 Alderbrook station survives intact. The three-story, 60-by-100-foot (18 m × 30 m) fishing boat and net storage shed, standing on pilings in the river, is the largest of the station's surviving buildings. It has a two-story boat lift at its northwest corner, but the lift was in "poor condition" [1] at the time of the property's nomination to the NRHP. Other structures still in place are a machine shop, a small cabin and the largest of the several wooden piers that connected the parts of the facility. Although only a few pilings remain of the complex's fish receiving station, the property remains as "a generally complete and [the] only remaining facility of the cooperative enterprise which figured importantly in Astoria's legendary packing industry, for many years the basis of local economy. The Co-op was a vital force through the peak period of salmon fishing on the lower Columbia, which had ended by 1930, but it continued active long enough to observe a 50th anniversary in 1946 and beyond." [1]
A boat lift, ship lift, or lift lock is a machine for transporting boats between water at two different elevations, and is an alternative to the canal lock and the canal inclined plane.
A machine shop is a room, building, or company where machining is done, which is a form of subtractive manufacturing. In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plastic. A machine shop can be a small business or a portion of a factory, whether a toolroom or a production area for manufacturing. The parts produced can be the end product of the factory, to be sold to customers in the machine industry, the car industry, the aircraft industry, or others. In other cases, companies in those fields have their own machine shops.
Among the coop's other buildings was a "storage warehouse and receiving station" built on pilings in the river at 31st Street [1] :8:5 (in Uppertown), which survives [3] but was heavily damaged in a 2007 storm.
