THE ASTORIA ARCHIVE · Open this section in the Archive
These pages are yours, and they are not a simplified copy of anything. Every record here is the same record the adults use, at the same depth, with the same sources and the same citations. What these pages do is set out the starting places: where to begin at your band, the one method that works on every record in the building, the sheet that runs it, and how to cite what you find so your work can be checked the way you checked it. It also says plainly what the Archive does not have yet.
Three starting places, by where you are. Each one ends at a real archive; nothing here is a copy of what stands there.
Younger readers · about grades K to 5
The cases are this Archive's records worked as investigations, and they are built to be worked with a teacher or a grown-up beside you. Start with a case. When a case sends you down to a record, you are reading the same page an adult reads, and the student sheet further down this page is the tool to bring with you.
Middle band · about grades 6 to 8
The Learning Paths walk the whole place strand by strand, in the Archive's ruled order: the Native nations first, then Chinese American Astoria, the expedition, Astor, the Trail's end, and the working heritages. The Yearly Gatherings hold every recurring event in the county's year, each with its founding printed verified or unverified. Legends holds the stories the town tells about itself, labeled as legend. That label is a promise: legend is filed as legend, fact as fact, and the two never trade clothes.
Older students · grades 9 to 12, and beyond
The full record at full precision: the story, the conflicts printed as conflicts, the sources named, the citation ready. Nothing in this Archive is held back or watered down for your age. Save what you use to your stack as you go, and the stack builds your works-cited page for you. The citation section below shows the machinery working, on a real record.
The record's most startling cards, dealt one at a time. Each card is a whole record, with its date, its words, and its source named under it, and See more on every card opens the record itself, at its holder. It is not a game, and there is nothing to win: it is the fastest way in this house to find out what kind of town this was. The same stack deals the Did-you-know card on the front page.
Fact Cards · Card 1 of 9
September 1846 · Cannon Beach
In September 1846, the United States Navy schooner Shark wrecks on the Columbia River bar, and three of her cannon break away. One is pulled from the sand at Arch Cape in 1898, and that cannon gives Cannon Beach its name. The 1898 cannon and the ship's capstan are kept today at the Cannon Beach History Center.
Source: Oregon Coast Beach Connection
The stack is shuffled fresh on each visit, and no card repeats until every card has stood. When the deck runs out, it shuffles again.
Cases for Kids stands in the same Archive as everything else here, over the same index: it is the children's table, not a different building. Four cases stand built, each from real records, and every case ends at a real record with its citation. The method under all four is three moves, and it works on every record you will ever open here:
1 · Look. Open the record and look at it closely before you decide anything: what it is, what day it carries, whose words it stands on.
2 · Check the source. Every record names its source; follow it. Two honest sources can disagree, and when they do the record prints both. Your job is to say which one the evidence backs.
3 · Say what you found. Write it down, in order, with the citation attached, the way the Cases for Kids write-it-down step does. A finding nobody can check is not finished.
Case 1
A sailing ship missed the river's mouth in the fog in 1906 and never left. Its ribs stand on the sand today, and the case works from the record and the famous photograph, nineteen days after.
Case 2
November 1805. Soaked through at the edge of the ocean, the Corps of Discovery voted on where to spend the winter, and the captains wrote down every vote, including the two that would have surprised almost anyone in 1805.
Case 3
The Flavel House carries two building years from two honest sources, and the bridge carries two opening dates. Both disagreements stand printed in the records. Your job is to decide which answer the evidence backs, in each case, and say why.
Case 4
July 29, 1966: the bridge opened and the ferry era ended, and the town read it in its own newspaper. The papers are free, page by page, and the case hands you the exact words to search.
Four cases stand at the desk today, each built from records on this site. A case joins them when its evidence is complete, and not before.
The same Observe, Reflect, Question sheet the teachers' page prints, worded for the person holding the pencil. It works on any record on this site: pick one, print the sheet, and fill it in as you go. It prints clean on its own, English first and then Spanish, whichever language the page is showing.
Look at a source: the student sheet
Your name
Class
Date
The record I am studying
Observe
What kind of thing is this: a photograph, a newspaper page, a map, a record card, something else?
What do you notice first?
Name three details.
What words, dates, or names are written on it?
Reflect
Who made it, and when?
What was it made for?
Who was meant to see it?
What was happening in this place at that time?
Question
What does it not show?
What do you still want to know?
Where could you check it? Where in this Archive would you look next?
If the person who made it stood here, what would you ask them?
The record's title
Who holds the original
The page or archive where I found it
The day I looked at it
Adapted from the Library of Congress primary source analysis tool: observe, reflect, question.
A citation is a record's address: it tells your reader exactly where to find what you used, so they can check it the way you did. Every record page in this Archive carries its citation in a box under the record, already built. You do not write it by hand. You pick the style and copy it.
MLA · the style most English and history classes ask for.
APA · the style science and social science classes ask for.
Chicago · the style historians use in books and papers.
Step 1. Open the record. Try it on this one: The bridge opens to traffic.
Step 2. Under the record, find the citation box. The three buttons above it switch the style, and the citation rebuilds itself in the style you pick.
Step 3. Press the copy button, and paste the citation into your works-cited list. Anyone who reads it can find the same record from it, including your teacher. That is the point of it.
Step 4. Or save the record to your stack as you work. The stack gathers every saved record’s citation into one works-cited page, which you can copy, email to yourself, or print.
Try it here, on a real record
Poems written for children, about this place: the Archive does not have them, and prints that instead of filling the space. The poetry research read the public record for a children's poem of Astoria, of this county, or of the river's mouth that could be reprinted freely, and found none. What the town's newspapers did print was verse for everybody, including a furniture advertisement written as a rhymed poem, on the front page of the Daily Morning Astorian of June 1, 1895. You can read those papers yourself, page by page and free, at Historic Oregon Newspapers. And the poems being written about this working river today belong to the living poets who write them: the FisherPoets have gathered in Astoria every February since 1998, their own work stays theirs, and the Gathering's page among the Annuals names the Gathering's own site. This page will not fill the gap with poems about some other sea.
Sound: the Listening Room keeps links, not recordings. The Archive's own record carries one sound of its own, the founding story read aloud in the Listening Room; the voices themselves still play at their holders: the Library of Congress's National Jukebox, and the oral histories at the Oregon Historical Society, Peter A. Huhtala's account of cannery Astoria among them.
Thin strands: three of the Learning Paths, the Chinese American strand, the Oregon Trail strand, and Farms, Forests, and the Fair, carry no dated record yet. Their pages print the gap and stand on the links to their holders, which is where their records live today. If your topic is one of those, start at the links on its strand page, and cite the source you used.
This page needs no sign-in and collects nothing. The records you save wait in your stack, which lives on this device only: nobody else can see it, and it is never sent anywhere. The only place in the whole Archive that asks for a name is the worksheet, and that name stays on your paper. If a page ever asks you for a password or an email, it is not this Archive.