If you have walked up the 164 steps of the Column so many times you no longer count them, this is the week to go again. On July 22, 2026, the Column marks a century since its dedication, and for the first time in a long time the hill at the top of Coxcomb feels like the busiest square mile in Clatsop County.
The centennial is not a standalone party. It is stacked against the Clatsop County Fair, the tail end of Scandinavian Festival season, the weekly Sunday Market downtown, and a fall concert calendar at the Liberty that is already selling. If you live here, the practical question is not whether to go. It is what to skip so you can make everything else.
The Evening at the Liberty
The formal commemoration is not on the hill. It is downtown at the Liberty Theater on Wednesday, July 22, with doors opening at 6:00 p.m. and the program beginning at 7:00 p.m. Cake, a short film, and a keynote from public historian Zachary Stocks.
Stocks is not giving a nostalgia talk. His lecture is titled "Lost Monuments of the Northwest," an engaging talk that explores an ambitious early 20th-century effort to highlight regional history. The premise is worth sitting with:
Exactly 100 years ago, the Great Northern Railway promoted its line as the most historic route in North America, sponsoring special train journeys and constructing monuments to honor the Northwest's past. Today, many of those monuments have been overlooked, vandalized, or abandoned, leaving the Astoria Column as a rare and notable exception.
Put another way, the reason you can still throw a balsa glider off the top is that a railroad marketing campaign from the 1920s mostly failed everywhere except here. That is a very Astoria fact, and it belongs in the way locals talk about the Column from now on.
The Scheduling Squeeze of July 22–25
The centennial evening is a Wednesday, which is generous of the calendar, because the rest of that week is spoken for. The Clatsop County Fair runs July 22 through July 25 in Astoria, at the Fair & Expo grounds off Walluski Loop. The same grounds hosted the Scandinavian Midsummer Festival a month earlier, honoring 2026 Grand Marshals Alan and Carla Oja for their work preserving the town's Nordic heritage.
If you have kids on the 4-H or livestock side, the fair is already your Thursday and Friday. If you do not, the fair week is still the week when Walluski Loop traffic patterns change, when parking downtown gets tighter on Wednesday evening because the Liberty is full, and when Sunday Market becomes the decompression after four straight days of programming.
A rough map of the week for people who want to do a little of everything:
| Day | Where to be | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Wed July 22 | Liberty Theater, 6 p.m. doors | Column centennial program with Stocks |
| Thu–Sat July 23–25 | Clatsop County Fairgrounds | Fair, livestock, midway |
| Fri July 24 | Fair & Expo Center, 7 p.m. | Kameron Marlowe concert at Clatsop County Fair |
| Sun July 26 | 12th Street, downtown | Astoria Sunday Market |
The Sunday Market on the 26th is the tenth of the season, which lands in the stretch when the stone-fruit vendors are hitting their stride and the crowds have not yet thinned toward Regatta.
Where to Land Before or After the Hill
If you are hosting anyone from out of town for the centennial, the Column visit itself takes about forty minutes with the walk to the top and a few gliders. The rest of the day is the point. A few pairings that hold up if you have not been in a while:
- Fort George Brewery and the Liberty Theater sit within a block of each other, which is the whole logic of a Wednesday-night Column plan. Bandsintown lists Astoria as having over 57 upcoming concerts, festivals, and comedy events scheduled in venues like Liberty Theater and Fort George Brewery, and most of them start after a Fort George dinner.
- Pilot House Distilling at 1355 Marine Drive is running a cocktail-making class on Thursday, June 25 from 5:30 p.m. and repeats through the summer. Locals treat these as a lower-key alternative to a full sit-down dinner before a show.
- Pho Mekha on Marine Drive is the answer to the question of what to do when your out-of-town guest is tired of chowder. The Vietnamese restaurant is a gem, with waitstaff in warm smiles, passion fruit lemonades on simple wooden tables, and charming decor that shows real care.
- Big Creek Coffeehouse works for the morning-before, when you want a laptop-friendly cafe that does not pretend the Column is not five minutes away. It is a cozy spot with a warm and inviting atmosphere, but you'll still see people pulling out their laptops and notebooks for a serious work session.
- Pelayo's Taqueria is still the counter-programming for anyone who has been to Buoy or Bridgewater one too many times this summer. Astoria's tastiest place to grab a burrito, savor authentic flavors, and feel satisfied while perched at a picnic table. This taco truck spot in a gas station parking lot is mostly outdoors.
- Dead Man's Isle, with Yakimon Izakaya upstairs, is the option for anyone who wants their post-Column evening to feel unlike anywhere else on the North Coast. The upstairs Japanese bar is a collectible-filled nook with whiskey and merchandise, and it is where the Column-day photos usually end up.
None of this is a ranking. It is a routing problem. The Column closes at dusk, the Liberty program starts at 7, and the fair midway runs late. If you plan the food around the fixed times, the rest works.
What the Rest of the Summer Looks Like From the Top
The centennial is the peak, but the reason it feels like the peak is that the rest of the calendar is unusually thick this year. A few dates worth putting on the fridge now:
- Regatta Square Block Party and Health Fair, Saturday, August 8, at 1132 Exchange Street. This one runs alongside the broader Regatta programming, which the Chamber describes as one of the oldest festivals west of the Rockies, a celebration of the Northwest's maritime history and future.
- Pink Martini at the Liberty Theater, Saturday, September 5 at 7:30 p.m. The kind of show that sells out to Portland day-trippers if locals do not move.
- Great Columbia Crossing 10K, Astoria, October 11, 2026. Registration for the walk-run across the Astoria-Megler Bridge tends to fill by late August. The Chamber calls it a unique opportunity to walk or run across the longest continuous truss bridge in North America, a fairly flat road with one STEEP incline to the peak of the bridge.
- Iron and Wine at the Liberty Theater, Thursday, October 15 at 7 p.m.
- Astoria Open Studios Tour, in its 16th year, a free self-guided event where visitors can step inside the working studios of over 50 artists throughout Astoria and the surrounding area. The tour has become the shoulder-season anchor for people who never quite made it to Regatta.
That is a lot of Liberty Theater on one list. It is not a coincidence. The building has become the town's default living room for anything that needs a stage, a projector, and a bar, which is part of why the centennial ended up there instead of on the hill itself.
A Small Point About the Hill
The Column belongs to everyone who lives within sight of it, which in this town is almost everyone. On Wednesday, the town is officially thanking a hilltop monument for surviving a century while its siblings across the Northwest did not. It is a fair thing to thank a piece of concrete for. If you have been meaning to bring your kids up for the balsa gliders, or to walk up alone and look east toward the river, this week is the week the whole town has agreed to notice it again.
If you are thinking further ahead than the fair calendar, and wondering what a home near the Column, the Riverwalk, or Uniontown might actually look like on the market this fall, Cindy Hawkins Colley has spent 28 years watching Astoria's neighborhoods change block by block. Let's Connect when you are ready to talk about it.
