Sara’s Old Photos: Preserving Astoria’s Legacy

--story originally published July 12th, 2015 on astoria rain (dot) com; Sara no longer has a brick and mortar shop at this location, but continues to give back to Astoria by sharing her images on her Facebook page

Sara Meyer sharing stories over historic photos with Mark Edy

“This is the way that I’m giving back to Astoria.”—Sara Meyer 

Giving back to Astoria: a total joy

Sara Meyers is methodically helping to preserve Astoria’s photographic legacy one ancient negative, tintype, and print at a time. She, along with her husband Chuck Meyers have been painstakingly digitalizing old photographs as a way of giving back to the greater Astoria community. As a way of archiving these jaw dropping snapshots of our local history, she has worked with floppy discs, hard drives, CDs, and USBs. While many tell her that she needs to put the collection on a cloud, she remembers a time when photos were stored on floppy discs, and those are no longer accessible. Because of the fickle nature of technology, she believes that the photos should be accessible to everyone—a creative commons of sorts; therefore, Sara’s Old Photos on 818 Commercial St. 100, houses a collection of amazing historical prints available to the public to peruse and purchase.

While the old photo prints are available to purchase, making money is nowhere near the main goal of her shop. Sara calls her work “a total joy,” and spends countless hours scanning and digitalizing old photos. She is also firm that the photos should be accessible to everyone so that they can be enjoyed by future generations, otherwise the photos would deteriorate and the history would be lost.

The Compleat Photographer

Sara has lived in Astoria since 1971, along with her husband and local photographer, Chuck Meyers. Many locals may know Sara and Chuck from the old Compleat Photographer on 14^th and Exchange, an Astoria institution that was unique for housing the whole shebang—you could buy your camera, your film, have it developed in house and get your print framed all in one place: the original “one stop shopping.”

Don’t bring your car, bring a pickup

Although they didn’t know it at the time, Sara’s Old Photos was already forming. For years people would bring fantastic old photos into Chuck and Sara’s shop. They would “ooh and ahhh” at them and they would tell us to keep a copy for others to look at. They just kept collecting photos and many people brought in family collections that they had no idea what to do with and a couple people brought in glass plates, which would deteriorate if they were not attended to properly. Chuck made contact prints and Sara shared them around.

Lisa Lamping, local photographer ended up with shoe boxes of negatives from Richard Jensen and Jim Bingham from Ball Studio when they went out of business. When Lisa started to downsize, she called up Chuck and said she was about ready to dump them. Chuck told her they wanted them and that he would bring his car over. The answer was “no, bring your pick up.” The haul filled the back of a pickup and 5 sections of shelving. For three years, Chuck and Sara opened up their shop to community members so that they could find their family photos. Sara watched many people find old treasured graduation, wedding and family photos. After that was finished, they took photos down to the historical society and a volunteer inventoried them; they are now in an archive accessible to people if they have a name to start their search with.

An end and a new beginning

Sadly, during the epic 2007 storm in December, when 7 windows were busted out and glass covered The Compleat Photographer’s expensive machinery, it seemed like the right time to close up shop in April 2008—31 years to the day of their opening in April of 1977. By that time, the very nature of photography had changed drastically anyway, and they both wanted to continue their passion for preservation—Sara’s Old Photos was born.

I met Sara at her shop on a sunny morning. I actually grew up with one of Sara’s sons—we competed on the AHS swim team together, but I really had no idea that Sara’s Photos existed until I saw her amazing page on Facebook. Talk about jaw dropping—to see photos of the Astoria Megler Bridge as it was being built, the Liberty Theatre in its heyday, horse seining in The Columbia, the list goes on. It is definitely worth a look, and I think worth following. Sara showed me around and talked about how her shop evolved. She also told me that visitors often pop in with old photos to show her—something that makes her eyes light up with excitement. Almost as she finished her sentence about visitors with unseen collections of historical photos, we heard the door jingle as a visitor arrived named Mark Edy.

A third generation Astorian

Mark was one such customer with a hidden treasure of never before seen (outside of his family) historical local images. He told us that his family has been from around the area since the 1880s—for example, his grandmother was born in Uniontown in 1893. His father managed Knappton Towboat Company down at the 14^th street docks, where the bar pilots were located and now owned by the river pilots. They had an apartment above it, which is now the Pilot House. He has stories of he and his sister riding the ferry back and forth for free—they knew all the ferry captains and even rode in with the guys in the engine room. He remembers an old man in the engine room who would engrave scrimshaw type carvings into soap.

He tells a story of the summer between his 8^th grade year and becoming a freshman in high school. At that time, the ferry was still running and cars often had to wait for hours to board. Mark knew a boy who sold Oregonian papers to the cars waiting to board the ferry in the morning. At the time, papers sold for no more than a dime, but that wasn’t where they made their real money. It turned out that the line to board the ferry was so long that they would finish reading it and give it back to the boys. Mark said (laughing) “We’d re-sell it a second time and that’s when we would make our good money. We’d turn in our money for the papers, but we’d keep the second round of sales.”

Rivers as roads

As the three of us sat, talked and looked at old photos, Sara pointed out that back in those days, the rivers were roads for old Astorians. Making “cigar rafts” was one way that logs were transported from Oregon down to San Diego. Mark’s grandfather was born in Canada but found it difficult to find work; he came down to Oregon to work with Kerry Line in 1915 and became their office manager. After harvesting a huge amount of timber, all the logs that came down that line were put into flat rafts and towed across to Cathlamet. They needed big chains to wrap the cigar rafts, which were thousands of logs chained together and transported by floating them down the river. Only four were lost, but one of the last ones caught on fire. The last cigar raft went down to Simon Benson’s sawmill in San Diego in 1941. When they burned, the fire was caused by the chains chaffing against the logs in rough seas.

"This is my grandfather," said Mark. "He is wearing a suit and has a hat on and standing on a cigar raft."

photo courtesy Mark Edy

Log truck driver at 12

Mark told another story of his maternal grandfather, whose father was killed when he was only 12. He was the oldest in the family, so he had to go to work; he bought his first log truck when he at 12. He proceeded to build up a huge fleet with operations here in Astoria, Coquille and Southern Oregon and up around Cathlamet. In 1935, he sold his fleet to Crown Willamette, which eventually became Crown Zellerbach, the 2^nd or 3^rd largest timber company at that time.

In 1905, A.S. Kerry from Seattle bought up timberland in the Nehalem River valley. They dumped their logs into the water for transport at an area called “Kerry” which was about two miles east of current Westport. Mark says you can still see remnants of the trestle if you know where to look. Near there was one of the longest logging railroads in the world. They even had a tunnel that was 1875 feet long. Near Birkenfeld where the Kerry line logging camp was located with a shop to work on the locomotives, was a town called “Neverstill.” Right after college, Mark himself went to work for Crown Zellerbach and was stationed out in Cathlamet. He got to know an old guy who grew up at the old Kerry camp in Neverstill. That guy told a story about a run his father as engineer on a railroad in the midwest was supposed to take that night, but was unable to do so when he got sick. A young railroad engineer stepped up to do it. The young engineer became a legend after he was killed on this run.  He had attempted to make up for lost time and ended up running into the back of another train that had not cleared the line. That young man was Casey Jones.

The legacy continues

As we wrapped up our blast to the past, Mark talked about a fascinating website about a guy who found old abandoned railroads on the Kerry Line to explore. Sara’s collection of photos can be found on Facebook at Sara’s Old Photos or through visiting her store. I for one, am thankful for the work that Sara and Chuck are doing to preserve Astoria’s historic photos and therefore the rich history of this town.

photo courtesy Mark Edy

story by Heather Douglas