A look to the future repeats actions of the past

Seaside has a long and storied past, and it’s something we often celebrate and reflect on with the fantastic old-time photos found throughout our community.

Vintage images make it easier to look back, but can you look into the future; do you ever try to imagine what things could be like?

More than 143 years ago, around 1870, renowned railroad tycoon Ben Holladay visited Seaside on a hunting expedition and clearly had some sort of vision in his mind shortly after arrival. A little over a year later, Holladay had built a luxurious Italian villa style hotel called the “Seaside House” on what is now the Seaside Golf Course.

And so it began for Seaside as a resort community and famous travel destination.

It’s difficult for me to imagine what visioning must have been like in the 19th century. This was more than 65 years after Lewis & Clark and their Corps of Discovery imprinted just a little bit of history on this area, but it was also about 50 years before the Promenade (in its concrete form) was constructed.

I believe Holladay was definitely a visionary for our community. Seaside House was known for its elegance amidst the relatively unknown Oregon Coast and was operating close to 30 years before Seaside was incorporated as a town in 1899. But Seaside House established this area as a haven – especially for Portlanders – that continues to this day.

Another Seaside visionary was L.C. Rogers (Seaside city engineer in the 1910s and 1920s), who was not only responsible for the aforementioned construction of the Prom, but also had the tremendous foresight to construct a diversion dam about seven miles southeast of Seaside in 1926.

This significant piece of history established the pristine entry point for Seaside’s drinking water. This gravity-fed system has been upgraded over the years, but the basic principle still remains, providing both residents and visitors water throughout the Seaside area.

Fast forward to 1971 – which, interestingly enough was 100 years after Seaside House opened – when another set of visionaries made the difficult decision to construct a convention center in downtown Seaside. Forty-plus years later, and this structure is responsible for an average economic impact of $40 million annually in Seaside. Can you imagine Seaside without it?

Here we sit in 2014, and it would appear, if history is an indicator of big achievements happening at least every 50 years since 1870 in Seaside, that we are poised for another significant accomplishment in our community in the next five to 10 years.

You can help be a part of that conversation when “Seaside 2034: Building a Bridge to Our Future” hosts a community town hall at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 4 in the Bob Chisholm Community Center. Whether you’ve lived here for 50 years or five months, or you’re a regular visitor to our community, we’d love to see you there to help pave the way toward a storied future.

Jon Rahl is the director of the Seaside Visitors Bureau and assistant general manager of the Seaside Civic and Convention Center. Have a thought or a comment based on tourism? Send Jon an email at jon@seasideor.com.