At Top of the Oregon Coast, Astoria Area's Fort Stevens Lets You Walk History

Published 08/20/25 at 6:45 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Astoria, Oregon) - It's time to do more than a little time traveling – maybe even get lost in history.

Fort Stevens State Park has pretty much taken over one sizable chunk of Oregon coast. There are miles of beaches here, a dizzying number of campsites, many more miles of trails and a massive forest. All of it is crammed into one state park; all of it just south of the stunning town of Astoria.

Then there's that remarkable history here that goes well beyond the Oregon coast. However, Fort Stevens is best known for the old Battery Russell and its enormous concrete bunkers as well as the Wreck of the Peter Iredale. All of it lets you walk and touch real history.

Here, enormous gunneries once guarded the mouth of the Columbia River, lodged in huge turrets which rested in sprawling concrete fortresses – all empty and abandoned now, with gaping holes like sad, hollow eyes. It's where guns, officers’ quarters and other war machinery once buzzed with activity. And there's quite a few of these around Fort Stevens.

Yet only one is open year-round. That's Battery Russell. Built around the turn of the last century, the gunnery eventually watched for invaders during World War II.

In 1942, a Japanese submarine fired shells at the battery, although none were fired back. This - aside from the brief bombing of a forest near Brookings (on the southern Oregon coast) by a Japanese aircraft - is about the only area in the continental U.S. which was fired upon by a foreign power since the War of 1812. Where a Japanese Sub Fired on Oregon: Battery Russell and Fort Stevens

Crawl around here and you'll find some amazing sights. This boxy, utilitarian structure meanders for a couple hundred feet. While the U.S. has no real ruins to speak of, this is the closest you'll come to that in this country. It's got that ancient, dark and dank castle vibe. Enormous holes where guns once sat now sit in moody silence, as do the slightly creepy stairways snaking their ways down into the bunkers and the old, spartan rooms that are labeled with such military purposes as "latrines" and "officer's lounge."

Other gunnery areas might be seen in summer during guided tours. Some of these were commissioned during the Civil War, while other, smaller gunneries have been turned into bird nesting areas and wildlife refuges.

What the gunneries looked like while active

There's also the Fort Stevens History Museum / Military Museum - and many of the trails were likely walked by Lewis and Clark over 200 years ago.

Enter the park by a six-mile drive after going west off 101 at the signs – approximately a half-mile south of MP 9.

Head down Peter Iredale Road and you'll encounter the famous wreck itself. It crashed here in 1906, and now its rusted, skeletal remains make for great climbing (tide permitting), although most of the time only its front tip is visible, with a few other higher objects sticking out to the south of it. Sometimes the sand is lower and even more of it is visible. More to History of Oregon Coast's Peter Iredale Than Just a Shipwreck

If you wander to the northernmost edge of the park you’ll encounter the South Jetty, where a viewing platform lets you see the waves up close as they slam into the boulders and you can catch glimpses of Astoria across the bay. Here, you're at the tip of that little nub that sticks out from Oregon – when you view it from a map.

Fort Stevens State Park: The Shocker Underneath This Oregon Coast Historical Site Did you know that parts of Fort Stevens didn't exist before 100 years ago?

Another interesting tidbit here is the lengthy trestle stretching across the water as you drive to and from the jetty. This cuts a curious diagonal across the landscape then stops sometime before the jetty, as if it were trying to reach it.

In fact, at one time it did. This trestle is what brought the boulders of the jetty to their resting place.

Beach Access #1 is here at the viewing tower – those yellow signs you see posted on many Oregon coast beach entrances. It's the first of all of them.

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