Soap Creek Valley · Monograph #6 · 17 of 19
P.. Staats Creek
P.. Staats Creek of James Hanish — printed pp. 70–73 — recorded April 10, 1990 at Forest Peak, Berry Creek and Staats Creek, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon. Every printed page has its own permanent link.
Zybach, Bob and Kevin Sherer 1994. James Hanish. Biographical Sketch and a Tour of Berry Creek, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon: 1930-1938. Soap Creek Valley History Project, Monograph #06. Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry, Corvallis, Oregon: 85 pp.
p. 47 = printed page 47 of the original book; the link on each page number is a permanent address you can send to anyone.
Provenance
- From
- #6 James Hanish
- Narrator
- James Hanish
- Recorded
- April 10, 1990 · Forest Peak, Berry Creek and Staats Creek, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon
- Interviewer
- Bob Zybach, Kevin Sherer
- Printed pages
- pp. 70–73
- Original
- http://www.nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Oral_Histories/Soap_Creek_Valley/06_Hanish/Zybach-Sherer_1994.pdf
- Accessioned
- From Bob Zybach’s upload, 23 August 2026
James Hanish: Yes, it's been there a long time, but I don't know what it was used for. It's got a sign on it.
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] It's an old gas station. There's a shell sign and zero.
James Hanish: That's right, he did have a gas station by gosh. He did start that.
Bob Zybach: What was his name?
James Hanish: Wienert, John Wienert.
Bob Zybach: We've passed McKibbons place, and we couldn't see the house there, do you recall the names of any other families living in this area?
James Hanish: No, not one. There used to be an old church, community church here but I see that's gone. Probably not enough people went to it so they destroyed it.
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] Now, that looks like a refurbished old building there.
Bob Zybach: How about the red barn there, is that.
James Hanish: It don't ring a bell. That might have been there, and I never paid any attention to it. They've reroofed it, I can see that.
Bob Zybach: So most of your travel went towards Salem, it didn't come up Airlie area?
James Hanish: Salem and towards Corvallis.
Bob Zybach: Are you familiar with this road in front of us here?
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] Maxfield Creek?
James Hanish: No.
P. Staats Creek
Bob Zybach: Let's see we're in an orchard at the end of Paul Dunn Forest Road at a marshy turn around, right?
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] You can't hardly see.
Bob Zybach: Jim, did this valley here have any name to it?
James Hanish: No, it didn't, as far as I know, it didn't have any name.
Bob Zybach: Did it have a road through it?
James Hanish: Well, trying to think where in the hell we're at now.
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] Well, Stevens would have been right down there to your right, back up in there.
James Hanish: No, there was no road through this valley. There was just as it is. The only road was accessed off the main gravel road to the homes that lived along back on the edge of this valley.
Bob Zybach: County road.
James Hanish: County road and then down in there, the road that came in that was facing down there, the Hoovers and the Cox place.
Bob Zybach: The Hoovers and Cox, but they had a road coming in off the county road.
James Hanish: Their road came into the road that we had come in to begin with that said dead end. That was the original road that went in there.
Bob Zybach: To the Hoovers and the Coxes?
James Hanish: Yes.
Bob Zybach: Ok, that's the one marked Paul Dunn Forest.
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] The one that's got the orchard by it.
Bob Zybach: Okay, and then down the county road there was the Brinkleys along it?
James Hanish: Yes.
Bob Zybach: Now there's people that live behind the Brinkleys, the Stevens?
James Hanish: Stevens, no they lived quite a way from the Brinkleys. They lived . . . they lived kind of down in the flat from the Dodgsons but their road came from the other side also.
Bob Zybach: So theirs came from the Hoovers and Coxes side?
James Hanish: The Hoovers and Coxes were down . . . way down it, but there was no road in there
Bob Zybach: So how did the.
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] He said they came in off the county road.
James Hanish: Off the county road.
Kevin Sherer: [KEVIN] Probably out there by the Brinkleys.
James Hanish: Yes. Because they were practically behind Brinkleys.
Bob Zybach: And that was the Stevens?
James Hanish: Yes. The Stevens family.
Bob Zybach: And where did the Dodgsons live then?
James Hanish: The Dodgsons were right in . . . the area that I took you up there the time where all that poison oak was?
Bob Zybach: Yes.
James Hanish: That was the Dodgson homestead.
Bob Zybach: And that would be off the 00 road?
James Hanish: Yes.
Bob Zybach: And then did anybody else live here besides the Stevens and the Dodgsons?
James Hanish: The only family that lived in this area but would be that way more would be the Hoovers.
Bob Zybach: Okay, the Hoovers.
James Hanish: Yes. And that was it.
Bob Zybach: And those houses were up on the other side of the valley there. So far as you know there were no houses on this side of the valley?
James Hanish: No. And they were down in the flat like that. . . where that road that we started to come in, it veered to the left and there's quite a large flat area there where they farmed and the home was right in that flat area.
Bob Zybach: Ok.
James Hanish: Hoovers was kind of up against this hill. The ridge, but the other house was down in the flat.
Bob Zybach: And then down in this area here, can you recall any orchards or any signs of Indian artifacts or any horses, old horses trails?
James Hanish: Not a thing. This was . . . used to run stock in here, people that lived here, they let couple cows and horses for use around the farm, but that was it.
Bob Zybach: How about this creek down here, did that have a name too?
James Hanish: No, they just called that just a wash.
Bob Zybach: Just a wash.
James Hanish: Because it dried up in the summer.
Bob Zybach: So no names to the prairie or the meadows here, just the land owners?
James Hanish: No.
Bob Zybach: Ok. Good.
Bob Zybach: Jim, when we were coming over, you were talking about the rumor of stage hold ups on Gold.
James Hanish: Yes.
Bob Zybach: Can you remember the stories you heard or. .
James Hanish: All I heard was there was supposed to have been treasure somewhere in the Forest
[Withheld from this edition pending review. The page keeps its printed number and its permanent link, so a citation to it still lands here.]
Speaker attribution inferred from typography where the printed page prints only Q and A.
How to cite this item
The first line is the citation as it is printed in the original. Use it when you cite the work itself. Use the second when you cite this page.
- As printed
- Zybach, Bob and Kevin Sherer 1994. James Hanish. Biographical Sketch and a Tour of Berry Creek, Benton and Polk Counties, Oregon: 1930-1938. Soap Creek Valley History Project, Monograph #06. Oregon State University Research Forests and College of Forestry, Corvallis, Oregon: 85 pp.
- This page
- Hanish 1994. P.. Staats Creek, pp. 70–73. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m06-hanish/p-staats-creek/ (accessed 2026).
- Cite this passage
- Hanish 1994, p. 70 — Monograph #06:70
https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/m06-hanish/p-staats-creek/#p70 Swap 70 for whichever printed page you are quoting: every page number in the margin is its own address.
More on citing this collection: How to cite the Zybach Collection.
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