Promenade
Seaside’s centerpiece is its 2-mile-long beachfront Promenade (or Prom), built in 1927. At the west end of Broadway, where the Turnaround divides this paved, level walkway into the North Prom and the South Prom, you’ll find a bronze statue marking the official end of the trail for the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805. South of the statue, on Lewis & Clark Way, between the Promenade and Beach drive (8 blocks south of Broadway), stands the Lewis and Clark Salt Works, a reconstruction of the fire pit used by members of the expedition to extract salt from seawater. During the winter of 1806, while the Corps was camped at Fort Clatsop, near present-day Astoria, Lewis and Clark sent three men southwest 15 miles to make salt from seawater. It took the three men nearly 2 months to produce four bushels of salt for the return trip to St. Louis. Five kettles were used for boiling saltwater on fires that were kept stoked around the clock. There’s an interpretive plaque that gives the history of the site and how it was rediscovered.
The Prom is a great place to stroll or bicycle. Every couple of blocks, paths lead through the wide swathes of beachgrass-covered dunes to the beach itself. The homes and cottages along the Prom, both north and south of Broadway, may look fairly modest, but in 2017 one of them on the South Prom was on the market for $2.35 million and a small fixer-upper on the North Prom was tagged at just under a million.
Seaside’s centerpiece is its 2-mile-long beachfront Promenade (or Prom), built in 1927. At the west end of Broadway, where the Turnaround divides this paved, level walkway into the North Prom and the South Prom, you’ll find a bronze statue marking the official end of the trail for the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805. South of the statue, on Lewis & Clark Way, between the Promenade and Beach drive (8 blocks south of Broadway), stands the Lewis and Clark Salt Works, a reconstruction of the fire pit used by members of the expedition to extract salt from seawater. During the winter of 1806, while the Corps was camped at Fort Clatsop, near present-day Astoria, Lewis and Clark sent three men southwest 15 miles to make salt from seawater. It took the three men nearly 2 months to produce four bushels of salt for the return trip to St. Louis. Five kettles were used for boiling saltwater on fires that were kept stoked around the clock. There’s an interpretive plaque that gives the history of the site and how it was rediscovered.
The Prom is a great place to stroll or bicycle. Every couple of blocks, paths lead through the wide swathes of beachgrass-covered dunes to the beach itself. The homes and cottages along the Prom, both north and south of Broadway, may look fairly modest, but in 2017 one of them on the South Prom was on the market for $2.35 million and a small fixer-upper on the North Prom was tagged at just under a million.
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