Astoria's Columbia River Maritime Museum undergoes $30M expansion

The Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria is undergoing a $30 million renovation. Work began in March and is expected to wrap up in September 2026. The expansion project will include remodeled gallery space, a new 24,500 square-foot facility and hundreds of boats and artifacts currently not on display. It will also feature two new Indigenous-focused exhibits: a photography display on the Chinook Indian Nation, and a permanent exhibit on the maritime cultures of Indigenous people up and down the Northwest coast, from Alaska to Oregon.

Bruce Jones is the executive director of the Columbia River Maritime Museum. He joins us with more details on the expansion.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria is undergoing a $30 million renovation. Work began in March. It’s expected to last for about two years. The expansion will include remodeled gallery space, a new 24,000 square foot facility, and hundreds of boats and artifacts that are currently in storage being on display. It will also feature two new Indigenous exhibits: a photography display focused on the Chinook Indian Nation and a permanent exhibit on the maritime cultures of Indigenous coastal people from Alaska down to Oregon.

Bruce Jones is the executive director of the museum. He joins us now. Welcome to the show.

Bruce Jones: Glad to be here, Dave. Thanks for having me.

Miller: Why did you embark on this major expansion and renovation?

Jones: We are so excited about this project. Because of our generous donors, we have a unique opportunity now to dramatically expand our offerings and our programming. We’ve always been committed to creating great cultural and educational opportunities here on the coast in our rural Clatsop County, and now we have the opportunity to really build on our founder’s vision. Our founder back in the 1950′s, Rolf Klep, who dreamed of a maritime museum that would rival any in the country right here in Astoria. He fought against a lot of naysayers who said “you’re thinking too big.” But we have a great museum now because of Rolf Klep’s vision.

We’ve decided to take it to the next level because we have the opportunity through our donors. But also because right across the street from my office, we have two warehouses full of artifacts and treasures, from small things, to artwork, to about 60 boats that the public never sees. All those objects that have been donated to us over the years and that we take great pride in preserving for the future, they represent stories, and none of those stories are being told. They’re not so much stories about the things, but it’s about the people associated with the boats and artifacts. It’s explorers, and fishermen, and women, and engineers, and designers, and longshoremen, warriors, and sailors.

The people that are associated with the maritime environment have such fascinating stories and lessons for all of us. This opportunity lets us bring those things out of storage, and bring them to the public in really exciting ways, with an exhibit design firm that has the latest ideas about how to present stories in an engaging way. We’re just thrilled to be able to bring more stories to people and share these educational and cultural opportunities with our community, and with the entire country, really.

Miller: I wonder if we could hear a couple of short versions of those stories now, about boats that are gonna be coming out of storage. What is a log bronc?

Jones: Exactly. Well, of course, the forest products industry, or logging if you will, was a big part of the early days in Oregon’s and Washington’s coastal development, and still is an active industry. Trees used to be dumped into the river and then shepherded down to mills for processing. Log broncs were small boats that were used to corral the logs on the river and get them into the mill. It’s about a 12 ft boat. It’s really interesting, most people have never seen one. We’re going to have it mounted on heavy duty industrial springs so that people will be able to get aboard the log bronc, and actually feel it move, and learn about a part of our economic and cultural history that most people aren’t aware of.

Miller: I was going to ask you if people can get on any of these boats, because it’s often more exciting than just looking at them. That’ll be an option for some of these vessels?

Jones: For some of the boats, we’re going to give that opportunity. We have a fantastic coast guard steel hulled motor lifeboat, the Triumph, which saved lives on the Columbia River Bar from 1961 until 2021. Sixty years of lifesaving service in incredible environments – 20 ft to 30 ft seas, winter storms. That boat was retired a few years ago. That will be one of the centerpieces of the new museum, and the guests will be able to go aboard that boat. There’ll be a wraparound monitor off the stern, showing a real scene of heavy weather rescues at the Columbia River Bar and give the visitor a sense of motion.

Of course, a lot of the boats are a little too delicate to let people get on, but in those cases, we’re going to let people get right up to them. We have a beautiful classic yacht built in Astoria in 1938, the Merrimac; it’s 45 ft long, absolutely gorgeous, reflecting the great craftsmanship and shipbuilding skills that were so important to Astoria’s history. And you’ll be able to walk up right to the deck and look inside the boat.

We’ll have the Duke, which was a salmon cannery tender built in 1902. It served for a century on the Columbia River, built in Astoria at the Wilson Brothers Shipyard. Guests will be able to go on the wheelhouse of that boat, to get a sense of a real working boat that made such a difference in the lives of so many people who depended on the fishing industry for their for the local economy, whether they were cannery workers, whether they were fishermen, whether they were boat builders or boat repair people. These are all things that have such an important part of the heritage of the Pacific Northwest.

Miller: As part of these major renovations, you’ve also committed to more of a focus on Indigenous maritime culture and traditions, and contemporary life. How much of a focus had there been at the museum on Indigenous culture in the past?

Jones: Yes, we only had a very small portion of one gallery that was focused on the Chinook Indian Nation Indigenous culture, and it’s a huge gap in our storytelling. It’s one that we should have filled a long time ago, and we’re very excited to be moving forward and filling those gaps now with the important stories of Indigenous maritime culture.

We opened our first new exhibit. I should say that this project started with the remodeling of 11,000 square feet in our existing building. That included creating a new gallery for an exhibit with the Chinook Indian Nation. This is the story of maritime heritage as lived today by members of the Chinook Indian Nation, told in their voices, using photography, using video, and two Chinook family canoes. The most exciting thing about the canoes featured in our exhibit is that it’s a living exhibit; the Chinook families will come in every summer and take the two canoes out on canoe journey, and we’ll follow them remotely with photographs and hopefully some livestream as they go through canoe journey. And then at the end of the summer, the canoes will come back to the museum to be seen by our guests.

Miller: That’s a different way to think about an object in the museum. I often think about them as these objects that once served human purposes and now they’re sort of dead artifacts that you can look at, there’s a little sign explaining what they are. As opposed to a tool that continues to be used by humans for part of the year and then goes back to the museum when it’s not being used. I’m not used to thinking about objects in museums like that.

Jones: We think it’s going to be really exciting for our visitors. What we like about it is it ensures that we maintain an ongoing collaborative relationship with the Chinook Indian Nation. It’s not simply, we create an exhibit and then say, “thanks, see you later.” This is an ongoing relationship. It’s one that we’re very excited about, and it continues to develop.

Then, on November 1, just next Friday, we open another new exhibit called Cedar and Sea; it’s a much more geographically expansive look at maritime culture of coastal Indigenous people, from Oregon all the way up through British Columbia and Alaska. And it features many, many just fascinating objects and artifacts. But it’s in the words of more than a half dozen living artists from different tribes on the coast, who are telling us, in their words, what their tribal traditions mean to them today. It really expresses the complexity of these rich maritime cultures that existed throughout the Northwest thousands of years ago, and brings it to the modern era.

It was important to us in designing both of these exhibits that it was really told in the voices of current Indigenous artists and tribal members. We think we’ve done that. I think our visitors will really learn a lot of new information, they’ll see things in a much different way, and have a much richer understanding of the maritime heritage that existed here long before the first people of European descent arrived.

Miller: Folks who’ve been there over the years may well remember an existing, wonderful exhibit about the Coast Guard rescues there. Is that going to still be there?

Jones: Yes, that exhibit in the current building will stay, and what we’re adding in the new building is a completely different motor lifeboat, telling a different story. We’re also very excited that we’re going to be able to display a Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter that is about to be retired: the [H]65 Dolphin Helicopter.

Of course, aviation has been a part of maritime ever since Wilbur and Orville [Wright] first flew. Within a few years, they put floats on airplanes, and the connection between aircraft and the sea has been there since aircraft have been around. Helicopters, specifically, have been used by the Coast Guard for maritime search and rescue here in Astoria since 1962, and even the Columbia River Bar pilots use a helicopter to fly the pilots out to ships at sea. So that’s a story that we think people will be excited about, and to actually see the helicopter up close and personal is going to be an opportunity they don’t get many places.

Miller: I want to turn to another piece of this $30 million project. You’ve had education initiatives in the past, but my understanding is no dedicated classroom there. What are you going to be able to do in this new one?

Jones: We’ve managed to bring in almost 5,000 students a year without a dedicated classroom for many years, and we even go into schools throughout Northwest Washington and Southwest Oregon throughout the school year. We reach over 10,000 students in about 450 classroom presentations every year, but our educators here at the museum have to move from space to space, depending on what space is available that day. In the new building, we’re designing and building a purpose-built classroom to our educators specifications, to include every connection they need, every monitor they need, every storage area they need. It’ll enable them to deliver their programs much more effectively, much more efficiently in a dedicated space.

Education is absolutely one of our top priorities. It’s our goal that even though we’re in a rural county, Clatsop County, that students in a rural county ought to have the same world class educational opportunities that students in more metropolitan areas have. We’re committed to that and this classroom reflects that.

In addition to the classroom, we have an interactive STEM area – so science, technology, engineering and math. We’re going to have about 2,400 square feet of interactive STEM exhibits that will be designed to appeal to young people, as well as adults. We’re trying to build that curiosity, that love of learning, and really inspire people towards STEM careers and maritime careers. There’s so many opportunities in the maritime world for young people, good jobs that pay really well that demand some technical knowledge, but that most people don’t know about because the maritime world, even though it really permeates every aspect of our lives, it’s invisible to most people.

Miller: You were recently at the International Congress of Maritime Museums in the Netherlands, with leaders from maritime museums all around the world. Is there something that you saw or heard on that trip that you want to bring back to Astoria?

Jones: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of interesting use of technology that we could incorporate in a new building, whether it’s just having a handheld scanner that you hold up to a panel to listen to something you want to learn more about, rather than having a large interpretive panel that takes up a lot of space, a lot of touch screens. Of course, whenever you bring technology into the equation, on the one hand, it opens a lot of doors and interesting possibilities, but it also adds some cost because things tend to break, you need to have additional staff to maintain them.

One thing I saw that I felt is very good is that the direction we’re moving is a good direction. Looking at these other maritime museums that I visited in the Netherlands and in England afterwards as well, I feel like what we’re building is going to be as good as anything that’s out there. It’s a combination of the interactive exhibits and educational aspects we have, but we’re putting a lot of boats in the new building. We’re going to have about two dozen boats and, as you noted, several that you can actually get aboard. There’s very, very few maritime museums that actually have large boats inside the building, but we felt it was important for people to get up close and personal, and actually touch these vessels, see the craftsmanship, and when possible, step aboard.

We have a George Pocock Racing Shell. So for your listeners who have seen “Boys in the Boat” or read the book, “Boys in the Boat,” one of George Pocock’s 60 ft long, eight-person racing shells will be there. We just have a wide variety of types of boats that are not in the current building, so it’s all new stories. We’re not going to be redundant of the current museum at all.

Miller: And if all goes well, when will folks be able to see all of this?

Jones: We intend to break ground on the new building by December of this year, and to open by this time in 2026 – two years from now, we plan to be open. We’re committed to providing world-class cultural and educational opportunities right here on the coast, to give people in Seattle, Portland and Salem a reason to drive out to the coast. We’re part of a cultural renaissance in Astoria: the Oregon Film Museum has plans to build a new building. The Astoria Public Library is going through a $10 million remodel. We’re getting a new Columbia Memorial Hospital. Astoria is a wonderful town. We’re thrilled to be here and to offer these opportunities.

Miller: Bruce Jones, thanks very much.

Jones: Thanks for having me.

Miller: Bruce Jones is the executive director of the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

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