Skip to main content
732 Duane St., Astoria, 503-325-2203, astoriamuseums.org/explore/oregon-film-museum. 10 am–5 pm daily. $6, children $2.
On the day we toured Astoria’s Oregon Film Museum last month, two strangers—both visiting from Northern Indiana—could be overhead meeting in the gift shop. How did they end up in a reconstituted jailhouse 2,300 miles from home? Goonies never say die. To that end, the Oregon Film Museum knows where its bread is buttered. The compact, four-room museum, housed in the former Clatsop County Jail, is largely a monument to Astoria’s most famous film production—The Goonies opens with a prison break from this very structure. Thirty-nine years after the film’s release, the museum retains its jailhouse feel: rugged iron, 7-foot ceilings (in some spots), a DIY ethos, and cells full of Goonies memorabilia. Devotees of Oregon’s broader film history will content themselves more through reading posted lists, placards, production maps, and seeing if they can match the Oregon movie with the dozens of quotes decorating the entryway ceiling. It’s an affordable, accessible pilgrimage for a Goonie from anywhere (at least once their ship docks in Astoria).
Don’t miss: The future. The Oregon Film Museum aims to break ground on a $10.1 million expansion in 2025. A new 13,000-square-foot building kitty corner to the jailhouse would allow the totality of Oregon’s rich film history to sparkle on its own, while The Goonies takes over the rest of the current structure.
Will kids like it? Absolutely. While cinephile parents play the “Six Degrees of Corey Feldman” movie connection game, little ones can shoot Oregon-inspired movie scenes via a green screen and watch their dailies at the end of their visit.