The Butterfly Fleet was a highlight of Astoria Regatta races in the 1909 festival.

In August, Clatsop County hosts one of the oldest festivals in the Northwest: the Astoria Regatta.

The Astoria Football Club sponsored the first regatta in 1894. The festival was originally intended to welcome home fishermen after their time spent in Alaska. Over the course of a long weekend, the Regatta featured a wide variety of events.

The 1894 Regatta featured demonstrations of the U.S. Coast Guard’s self-bailing surf boats. In later years, visitors watched from the riverwalk as Coast Guard crews staged a rescue with their breeches buoys.

Festival attendees could sign up for individual competitions, including diving, log rolling and foot races.

The famous Butterfly Fleet gillnet boat races also became a staple of the Regatta’s event schedule. Columbia River gillnetters were an integral part of salmon fishing history.

Long gillnets would be suspended vertically in the water. When fish swam into them, their gills would get caught in the netting and were hauled in.

During the Regatta boat race, fishermen would mount more sails onto their boats and run “wing to wing” in the downwind leg of the race. With all this extra fabric, the boats looked like butterflies gliding down the Columbia.

The first salmon derby was hosted in the 1930s and coincided with the last day of the festival. At the event, amateur anglers could pay an entrance fee for a chance to win the big cash prize for the largest fish.

Thousands of fishermen participated every year. The derby was an opportunity to celebrate Astoria as an outdoor recreation destination.

As one 1950s brochure described: “It’s time again to hear that old familiar cry of ‘fish on’ echoing across the most famous fish pond in America, the estuary of the Columbia River.” New regulations in an effort to preserve fish and wildlife in Oregon brought the derby to a close in the 1960s.

Although the first Astoria Regatta took place in 1894, the first Regatta queen wasn’t crowned until 1897. Today, inducting the new Regatta court is a staple event of the festival.

For more than 100 years, young people across Clatsop County have been chosen for the court based on their commitment to community service and academic achievement.

Throughout the year, court members attend community events, hone their public speaking abilities and participate in development courses preparing them for the future. Many also receive scholarships to attend college upon graduating high school.

The Astoria Regatta celebrated its 125th birthday in 2019. Since the first festival was held in 1894, it has been suspended on only four occasions — World War I, the Great Astoria Fire of 1922, World War II and the coronavirus pandemic.