STOP #4 SOAP CREEK [Settlers]

As you traveled Airlie Road during the first part of this tour, did you notice the shape of the hills to the south? Could you see how Coffin Butte came to be named? This landmark was used by HBC beaver hunters in the 1830's, by pioneer road builders in the 1840's, and by subsistance farmers in the 1920's to guide their way to the Soap Creek Valley. The Writsman's weren't the first family to homestead their claim. They had purchased their cabin and an unregistered land claim from surveyor George Stump. This was not unusual. Many homesteads in Oregon were bought, sold, and traded before the enactment of the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850. Although this Act provided free land to white adult emigrants to the new territory, many arrivals were content to purchase the developed claims of their predecessors. An unusual feature of the Act is that it allowed a man's wife to claim, and in her own name, an amount of land identical in size to her husband's claim. Before long the legal age of marriage for women in the new Territory was twelve. In this manner, William Berry sold his claim near Oregon City and moved to the Soap Creek area in 1849. Following David Carson's death in 1853, his wife Letitia (a former Kentucky slave) had to sue the executor of her husband's estate for the money from the sale of her own farm. Not only was slavery illegal in Oregon at that time - so was being black. George Roberts "proved up" on his claim, and then quickly sold parts of it to his neighbors Green Berry Smith, David D. Davis, and others in the mid-1850's. The town of Tampico was partially constructed on a portion of the Robert's claim. As was the case in many areas of the Willamette Valley, the people who first "pioneered" the Soap Creek Valley area were not always the same as the ones who ultimately settled here.