...a book I started over a month ago, and just finished today. Making it sound like it was not much good, or very interesting. But it really was, and I will recommend it. Though you have to like to read non-fiction, and definitely does not have a 'happily ever after' ending. Remember the book you read the 'report' on here, some weeks ago, about the Arctic explorers and all the misery they went through? This one is not quite that bad, but it will give you the shivers when you trek with them over the Rockies in the dead of winter. Under-fed, insufficiently clothed, compelled to drag a s**t load of trade goods over the Continental Divide, through hostile territory, lost as a haint in the graveyard in a snowstorm.
"Astoria" by Peter Stark is the story of the founding of the city, on the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon. Originally built as a fur trading post, and funded by John Jacob Astor. He was a German immigrant and eventually a very successful business man, with accumulated wealth that would make him a billionaire in today's currency. He had the idea that he could send men with experience in trapping and fur trading to buy pelts that he would then ship to China for a huge markup. Wanted to establish a series of trading posts in the north west, that was previously only known from the trek of Lewis and Clark.
Like that book about early exploration into the unknown Artic regions, this one has plenty of well-documented poor choices. Stark read lots of journals, talked with lots of locals and well-versed historians in the area, including college professors and native people from the First Nation who have a fascinating oral history, handed down through the generations. Astor ultimately pretty much lost his shirt in this venture, but continued to deal in furs with trappers in eastern Canada and the northern US. He also had a great deal of real estate that played a big part in his accumulation of a fortune that he bought cheap in New York City and resold as it grew and developed.
At the end of the book Stark tells what happened to many of the key members of the founding party, both overland trekkers and those who sailed around south America to get to the mouth of the Columbia. Like you see at the end of a movie that is 'based on true story', you find some went on to be successful business men, and others broken and permanently damaged from their experience.
Really interesting: is that I was actually IN Astoria. I'd checked the book out, totally randomly, in late July, never knowing that I would GO to Astoria in early August. When we were traveling in Washington state, we drove south, and went across the Columbia River, on the bridge that takes traffic from Washington to Oregon. And right there, on the southern bank of the River, sits Astoria. Vastly different of course, from the primitive log houses and fortifications that were carved out of the wilderness in the early 1800's, but Astoria none the less. Where we rode the trolley down the tracks along the river front, and ate at a neat little pub, sampling brews and watching boats plying along the water. Good fun with my fave. peeps.
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