Many fortunes were made in 19th-century Astoria, and the enterprising Captain George Flavel made his by operating the first pilot service to guide ships across the treacherous Columbia River Bar. In 1885, after making his millions, Captain Flavel (1823–1893) had this imposing Queen Anne–style house built for his wife and three children. (As a side note, Captain Flavel was 30 when he married 14-year-old Mary Christina Boelling, the daughter of a German immigrant who ran a boarding house in Astoria.) Your ticket is a calling card that you present when you step into this enormous and ornate home. It’s a self-guided tour with a docent available to answer your questions. How tall are those ceilings anyway? At least 14 feet. The wood used everywhere and for everything, including the commodes, is mostly native Douglas fir. Some of the furniture is original, some of it is typical of the period. This was certainly a far more formal age than our own, though the house, with its giant dining room, sitting room, and library, has a lived-in look. (The last daughter, Nelly, resided here until 1936.) Mrs. Flavel and her two daughters, even though they moved in rather elevated social circles in Astoria and San Francisco, did all the cooking, most of the cleaning, and washed the dishes themselves. The house and its occupants present a fascinating portrait of an upper-middle-class family in the rough-and-tumble Pacific Northwest of the late-19th and early-20th century—do want to watch the 13-minute video in the ticket office (the former carriage house) to learn their background before going in. The nine trees in the Victorian-style garden around the house—a giant sequoia redwood, a camperdown elm, four cork elms, a bay laurel, a pear tree, and a ginkgo—were obtained by Captain Flavel on his voyages and planted after the house was built.