Climb this Oregon tower for free, then pay a dollar to throw a wooden plane off the top
Climbing the Astoria Column costs nothing, and always has. What almost every visitor pays for anyway is a dollar wooden airplane from the gift shop at the bottom, hauled up 164 spiral steps, then thrown off the top into the wind over the Columbia River.
A 125-foot tower with a 400,000-visitor obsession
Perched on Coxcomb Hill above Astoria, the column rises 125 feet and puts you 575 feet above sea level by the time you’re standing at its base. From the observation deck at the top of those 164 steps, you get a 360-degree view of the Columbia River, the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and the Pacific beyond — the kind of payoff that pulls in over 400,000 people a year to a monument most of them had never heard of before pulling into the parking lot.
Those stairs are steep and narrow, so this is a genuine climb, not a stroll. Worth it anyway — this might be the best view on the entire North Coast for the least effort it takes to get there.
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The whole story of Astoria is etched into the concrete
Built in 1926 and paid for by Great Northern Railway president Ralph Budd, the column cost just over $27,000 to construct. Italian artist Attilio Pusterla spiraled the region’s history up its exterior using sgraffito, a technique where he scratched images into wet plaster to reveal a darker layer underneath, working off a scaffold that hung directly from the tower as he went.
The murals trace everything from the land before explorers arrived through Captain Robert Gray’s discovery of the Columbia River to the arrival of the railroad. Take a slow lap around the base before you climb — almost nobody does.
The grounds around the column also hold a raised replica of Chief Concomly’s burial canoe, a tribute to the Chinook leader who navigated and traded along the lower Columbia in the early 1800s. It’s a five-minute add-on to the visit, not a detour.
The real tradition happens after you’ve already climbed back down
Buy a wooden glider at the gift shop for a dollar, then carry it back up to the observation deck and let it go. It catches the wind, banks, and floats down over the park while everyone below tries to guess where it’ll land — some have turned up more than six miles away.
An anonymous donor reportedly covers around $40,000 a year just to keep that price at a dollar, which says a lot about how much this one small ritual means to people who grew up coming here.
What it actually costs (hint: not the column)
Climbing the column and walking the grounds is free, every day, year-round. The catch is parking — $10 per vehicle, but that pass is good for a full year, so it’s a one-time cost if you’re coming back to Astoria anytime soon.
The park is open daily from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the gift shop keeps shorter, seasonal hours, so time your glider purchase accordingly. After dark, the column lights up in a rotating color show visible from most of downtown Astoria — worth swinging by even if you already climbed it earlier that day.
Pair a stop here with a proper walk through Astoria itself — the town earns a full day on its own, not just a pullout on the way to the beach. Have you thrown a glider off the top yet, or is this the excuse you needed?
Rules and fees change — always confirm current requirements before you go.
