Friday, August 12, 2016

Big Guns At The Mouth Of The Columbia

We went to Forts Stevens the other day, it's a historical heritage site now. It was originally built in 1863 as an earthen works fort then later upgraded. It covers 3,000 acres near the mouth of the Columbia river overlooking Youngs Bay.


Back in WWII it was going full steam and even got shelled by a Japanese submarine once!
We have been there before and I posted pictures of it a couple of years ago but it was another case of got there late and didn't have time to see everything.

The place is literally falling down now in some spots so if you ever get out to Astoria Oregon, it's just a few minutes drive away.

The battery in my phone died before I could get as near as many pictures as I wanted but here are some of the Big Guns they have.


My phone died right after this picture. There are two of the 5 inch pill box guns overlooking the bay and there was a perfect shot of it looking out over the bay as a container ship went by that I missed.It would have been like shooting fish in a barrel.



This is the Big Daddy they still have there. The fort had placements for five or six of these bad boys back in the day. This is the only one left but the cement placements are still there.







This is the business end of a cannon they have in the museum that you can clearly see the rifling inside of.


You can easily spend an entire day wandering around the place. If you get there early enough you can get a tour riding around in the back of a rusty old Deuce and a half and get an underground tour of one of the old gun placements. Cost is $5 to park.

Like I said, a lot of it is literally falling down so if you want to see some of this stuff, now would be a good time.

On our way out we got quite a surprise, there was a full grown cow elk grazing right next to the road on our side. I slowed down and was going to get a picture with my phone connected to the charger when she decided she wanted to race and took off down the side of the road right next to us! My wife probably could have reached out and touched her she was so close. I slowed down again and almost stopped just in time for the crazy thing to dart left right in front of us and gallop off back up the road. The last thing I saw was this thing looking back at me with this goofy look on her face as she galloped away. I know damned good and well that elk was playing with us.
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3 comments:

drjim said...

Fort MacArthur in San Pedro has some of the same "Retracting Carriage Guns", and one of the green wheeled artillery pieces.

The big ones could toss a 2000 pound shell some 20 miles.

Here's the website:

http://www.ftmac.org/index.htm

August 12, 2016 at 2:20 PM
Anonymous said...

"stay lost"

Wildflower

August 12, 2016 at 8:08 PM
Phil said...

It looks to be light years ahead of Fort Stevens when it comes to preserving and restoring the site and relics.

August 13, 2016 at 12:21 PM

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