Astoria, Oregon

Astoria occupies a steep hillside at the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets the Pacific, founded in 1811 as the first permanent American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. The Astoria Column, a painted concrete tower on Coxcomb Hill, provides a 360-degree panorama of the river, the ocean, and the Cascade and Coast Range foothills. The city retains a dense stock of Victorian residential architecture in its hillside neighborhoods, and the Columbia River Maritime Museum holds a nationally significant collection relating to Pacific Northwest maritime history.