Astoria Book Authors

A glimpse into Astoria's fabled fishing community and Finnish heritage - a bygone era.

Astoria boomed once the canning industry took off along the lower Columbia River. Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes flocked t the area to make a living in the flourishing fishing industry, in logging, and in farming. By 1890 Astoria was home to fourteen canneries, fifty-four saloons, and thirty-five brothels. In 1897 two hundred fishermen, most of them Finnish, purchased a cannery site and it became known at the Union Fishermen's Cooperative Packing Company (Union Fish, for short). This book tells the story of some of the people associated with this cannery, the gillnet fishing industry prior to WWII, and Uniontown (also known as Finntown).

SPECIAL INTERESTS/ AUTHORS: Greg Jacob received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition in 1982 from IUP. His research and interest focus on nature writing and ecocomposition. He is the author of Writing and Eco-composition, 2002. He has received two Fulbright Awards to India: a Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminar (1984) and a Fulbright Lectureship (1990). Another scholarly interest is in the history and culture of the lower Columbia River. Author of Fins, Finns, and Astorians.