Clay minerals from sediment samples obtained on Astoria Fan were analyzed by X-ray diffraction. Clay minerals are defined for the purpose of this study as crystalline phyllosilicates less than two microns in equivalent settling diameter. The clay minerals are subdivided into the five common families: montmorillonite, chlorite, vermiculite, illite, and kaolinite. One X-ray scan of a magnesium ion saturated, ethylene glycol treated sample was sufficient for the identification of all the clay minerals. A typical Recent hemipelagic sediment contains about 40 percent montmorillonite, 30 percent illite, and 30 percent chlorite. Neither kaolinite nor vermiculite is detectable in these samples. These concentrations are similar to those reported for Columbia River sediments. The surface sediments have an identical clay mineral assemblage from the head of Astoria Canyon to the outer edge of the fan approximately 250 kilometers offshore. All of the Recent sediments in piston cores from Astoria Fan are the same as the surface sediments on the fan. This similarity indicates an unchanging source during Recent time and a lack of any visible marine diagenesis after burial. X-ray traces of Pleistocene clay minerals are distinctly different from those of the Recent. One can use this change in clay mineralogy as a time marker across the fan. Presumably the Pleistocene clays were formed under different weathering conditions caused by different climatic conditions. / Graduation date: 1967

xii, 169 p. : ill. (some col.), maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This thesis examines the possibility of a broader approach to the concept of "context" within the practice of historic preservation by producing a more inclusive model for preservationists to use in reading dynamic cultural and environmental systems. The industrial landscape of Astoria, Oregon with its buildings and ruins of once dominant fishing and canning industries serves as a case study to explore this idea. The author examines late 19th century and early 20th century industrial development in terms of cultural influx, industrial landscape development, and vernacular architecture. This thesis explores how the landscape has responded to influences such as economic shift, environmental change, migrant populations, and technology, and how cultural landscapes and the natural environment combine to form a distinct human geography as reflected in architectural and material remains. Many of the issues raised are specific to maritime, west coast, and extractive industrial settlements. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Susan Hardwick, Chair; Shannon Bell

A large wave of Chinese immigrants came to the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. Employment, mainly in the salmon-canning industry, drew thousands of them to coastal Astoria, Oregon. Taking the period between the first Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924, this thesis focuses on the Chinese merchants in Astoria and their importance for our understanding of race relations in the town during these years. Specifically, the merchants help to make sense of how the Chinese related to the local white population, as different sources suggest different trends of amiability and hostility. Newspapers testify that local Chinese gained acceptance during the period, going generally from vilified outcasts to respected members of the community. Immigration case files, however, show that officials displayed little resistance to Chinese in the early exclusion years, but worked harder to deny Chinese applications toward the end of this period. So, from one body of records it seems that white Astorians grew more tolerant of Chinese during these years, while the other document set shows a rise in conflict with the immigrants. This apparent contradiction can be reconciled by considering the demographic changes in the Chinese immigrant community during this period, along with class biases and the role of merchants in immigration and social interactions.

This phenomenological study presents a map of spatial forces in Ivan Doig’s The Sea Runners. The investigation calls attention to forms of space-experience that come across as a sense of embeddedness in environment. Events, places, feelings, and moods materialize as being nested within greater events and places that are likewise nested in even larger ones. The study shows that experience, place, memory, hope, and narrative have nested structures. The embedding of narrated realities within larger realities is identified as a mode of organization central to the text’s complexity. Even the smallest acts, events, moods, and feelings are set within larger ones with greater scope, reach, or extension. The literary force of The Sea Runners is made possible by a sustained presentation of complexly interlocking orders of embedding. These orders are co-ordinated and synchronized in terms of movement. The study shows how kinetic systems of circulation, vanishing, encircling, and transformation overlap and reinforce each other so as to create a comprehensive co-ordination effect that colours the presentation of landscape and travel. Movement is highlighted in the essay as a factor that makes it possible for these kinetic structures to be fused in various patterns of co-ordination. In The Sea Runners, place and motion complexly combine to shape the narrated flow of lived experience. In its various orders of fluctuation, space-experience flows in intimate association with life-feeling and movement-sensation. Certain basic kinetic categories are delineated as being at the heart of the text’s overall structure. The study brings its findings to a conclusion by discussing these kinetic categories of lived space as running parallel to categories of lived temporality.

The Astoria-Megler Bridge is a 6.6 kilometer (4.1 mile) long bridge, connecting Oregon and Washington on US 101, with a continuous steel truss main span of 376 m (1232 ft). It is the second longest main span bridge of this type in the world. Due to vortex shedding, some of the long truss verticals exhibit wind-induced torsional vibrations. These vibrations can create large numbers of repeated stress cycles in the truss verticals and the gusset plate assemblies. The members and connections were not designed for such conditions and the impact of this behavior on the service life of the bridge is uncertain. A full-scale representation of one of the truss verticals observed to exhibit such wind induced torsional response was fabricated and tested in the Structural Engineering Research Laboratory at Oregon State University. Experimental data of the rotational behavior and the stress distribution along the vertical were collected using inclinometers, an angular rate sensor, and uniaxial and rosette strain gages. The data collected were compared with existing analytical methods and predictions from finite element models. The observed experimental results including twist angle, stress distribution, and stress magnitude were well captured by both the finite element model and the analytical equations. Using analytical expressions, the fatigue lives of the existing bridge verticals were predicted based on assumed storm duration and recurrence. / Graduation date: 2013