P.. Soap Creek Schoolhouse

Bob Zybach: But if this was the original donation land claim survey, they would have put the driveway down here following that survey line, that would have been if they built it a hundred years later. That's why I'm wondering which side of this driveway the stone was on.

Charlie Olson: Anyway they went to court, and the court decided that the survey at that time . the present survey was the right line, so it moved the property line over. And this over here, they won much more land from down yonder and up.

Bob Zybach: Who owned the other land on the other side over there?

Charlie Olson: Dorgan.

Bob Zybach: Dorgan?

Charlie Olson: Dorgan, I could name you about several of them.

Bob Zybach: I was just kind of curious who. . . this was the Baker place and I was wondering what the next place was called.

Charlie Olson: If we go back, it would be Moore.

Bob Zybach: Oh, the Moore place. Okay, so now we're heading into the Moore's place.

Charlie Olson: It would be Moore and it would be Smith and it would be Lacy and

Bob Zybach: We'll keep going that way, I don't want to get ahead of us, I just want to keep stopping at these places and identifying who was there and. . . we've gone by the Baker's place and the cooks bought from the Bakers and I've got Cook's up until 1926, so now we're heading over to the Moore place here. Is that correct?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

P. Soap Creek Schoolhouse

Bob Zybach: We just passed Writsman's Creek Road. Was the Moore's house. . . where was the Moore's house from here?

Charlie Olson: You mean the owners . . . the original owners?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: There's a hump over yonder. There's a road that started in

Bob Zybach: is this the road we just passed here, somebody just came out of?

Charlie Olson: No, that's . . . Dorgan house. That's the Dorgan house, it was built, but. .

Bob Zybach: The blue house is the Dorgan house?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Charlie Olson: He just built that, he married a woman that was a music teacher, he got acquainted with . . . they were Catholics, and he got acquainted with her in Portland. And then they got married, and she came out here. And there was something in France, so she could go back and get that she hadn't gotten when she was teaching there and she went back there. She couldn't stay because if there was something in the world that she didn't have in the way of music she was going to get it, but she went back there and then she came back here again and there was nothing here that they could teach her because she knew already and she was good. She could argue with you on something and then play a tune. She could sing one song and play another one. She knew how to put emphasis on a melody that we would just not put any emphasis on at all and wear it out. And she could put emphasis on that and hold and make it a beautiful melody.

Bob Zybach: What time was this that you heard her play?

Charlie Olson: What time?

Bob Zybach: Yeah, 1920's?

Charlie Olson: I was probably in the fourth grade at that time, so

Bob Zybach: 1910?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, if I started at six and four that would be '10.

Bob Zybach: So,.

Charlie Olson: Wait a minute, wait a minute. We're getting my age in and the date wrong.

Bob Zybach: You were born in 1898. I mean. . . 1910, I'm just trying to get to the nearest ten years.

Charlie Olson: When I was six years old, you know, why we'd have to take two years off on that other date because I wouldn't be six years old in 1906.

Bob Zybach: Yeah, I'm just trying to get to the nearest ten years, I just wanted to know whether she played music in 1930's or 1920's or 1910. So I wasn't trying to get the exact year, but. So they lived here in 1908, in 1908 you could hear. . . she played music and she'd been to France. When did they build this house?

Charlie Olson: They . . . I don't know.

Bob Zybach: Did you know anything about anybody that was living up this draw?

Charlie Olson: There wasn't anybody living up in that draw. The stream that we got water from

Charlie Olson: came right down . . . we're just about sitting where it run across the road.

Bob Zybach: Okay, that's the stream you're saying used to have fish? That's the stream that's on. that's the stream that's on page 26 here going on the guide [Soap Creek Auto Tour]. This building here I believe was up here about a quarter mile and there used to be a stream coming down by the school here and there used to be fish in that stream?

Charlie Olson: I don't think there was fish in it, there could probably be some up here a little ways, but you know, there was a fall in here just a little ways above where we got our water. We got out water for that school house right here, but there was a water fall that was probably four feet.

Bob Zybach: Four foot waterfall?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And that was right up this draw here?

Charlie Olson: That was right up this draw.

Bob Zybach: What happened to the water here?

Charlie Olson: Well, didn't happened anything to the water, the water was good.

Bob Zybach: Where's the good water now, is what I mean?

Charlie Olson: Well, yeah, that's an indication again of what I told you about . . . I think we had 200 inches of rain fall at that time, when we haven't now got more than about probably 40 inches.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember about when this dried up?

Charlie Olson: It didn't just dry up suddenly.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the last time it ran?

Charlie Olson: It was still there when we were in the ninth grade, it was still there and it was good. I built a little water wheel on that water fall.

Bob Zybach: So it dried up while you were a young man, stopped running when you were a young man?

Charlie Olson: Well, I can't tell you just when it dried up because I wasn't here when it dried up.

Bob Zybach: It was still running when you left here then?

Charlie Olson: Yeah. And it was running across . . . there was a bridge here. There was a bridge and we had to cross three planks.

Bob Zybach: Was the school located in the same spot when you were a kid?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, it was located in that same spot, and when they cut that school house in two

Charlie Olson: and moved it across here and took it down to Tampico and put it back together again. Zorenson built that and we tried to get the date when that was built, but there was another way . . . I talked to this guy that was a rattle brain. Old, I don't know how old he was. But he didn't know where he had met me, but when I found out he lived in Philomath, I know that he hadn't met me probably but he knew that I had a school bus business there and he knew who I was, but I didn't know him. But after I got rid of him on the phone and was talking to Audrey, why we realized that he probably just knew me because I had a school bus business there. But he didn't know anything about this date. But we can get that date. We can get that date, I think.

Bob Zybach: I'll tell you what happened. Angela was helping me work on this [Soap Creek Valley Auto Tour, Bob Zybach, OSU Research Forests cc: 1989] and we're putting it together and right about ten o'clock [p.m.] I got a call from Lorna Grabe just around the corner and she changed all this information from what I had written, but she knew these dates for sure. She said that this was constructed in 1932, and the previous school was constructed in 1899, and then I got this. . . there was a picture of another building here that she said was completed the previous year, but she said this school here was 1932.

Charlie Olson: Well, that is possible, but we can get that exact because they have records in there when the school started. And the other school had been missing for quite a while when this one was built and her records, all the records in there would give you the exact time when that school was started again.

Bob Zybach: And that's the woman that call me up and gave me those numbers there so it's not the same as that book that we've been referring to, but these numbers here. . . they were given to me the night before this went to press. So as near as I can tell, that's where the numbers are coming from, those have got to be the right numbers. But you went to school here about 1904 or 1905, something like that?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And so it was the building before this building?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, it was the old. It was the building I went to school in was this big building that is shown here [in the Tour Book]. I don't know what page it's on, but there's a big building and it shows. My fingers are like sticks.

Bob Zybach: I didn't think I had any other school buildings in there, I think that was the only school

Bob Zybach: building they had, that one we were looking at there.

Charlie Olson: Well, there is a point there that these people are probably a little touchy on, they would like to have that school the original school but it isn't.

Bob Zybach: No that's 1932. I think we were just looking at the picture of the. . . I think that's the one you're looking for right there.

Charlie Olson: I think it is.

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: Yeah, it is.

Bob Zybach: That's 1899. Does that sound right, about the year after you were born?.

Charlie Olson: Just about.

Bob Zybach: Did you hear of any school being there before that building?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So even this building wasn't. . . it shows. . . there's a picture, there's a building I cut off of this to fit the page here, there's a picture right here and they said that was built in 1898 just the year before.

Charlie Olson: The picture that's on the wall up there, that I spoke to you about this morning, the picture of that will show you the original school house which is then on that picture the wood shed.

Bob Zybach: I've got that picture. It shows some people standing in front of it.

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: I think you might even be one of the people.

Charlie Olson: Yeah. There's that great big tall Miss Dullen, seven footer I believe.

Bob Zybach: She was really that tall? Or she just looked that way?

Charlie Olson: Oh, she was immense. You can tell by the picture you know compared with the other people.

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: But on that picture, you said you have it already.

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Charlie Olson: You can see the original school.

Bob Zybach: She was saying the original school was only built a year before that school, the wood shed school they said they just built for temporary use before the next school went in.

Charlie Olson: Well that one that . . . the wood shed on that picture was the school for quite a while.

Bob Zybach: She said just one year, and before that I thought it was back to the 1870's.

Charlie Olson: Who said that?

Bob Zybach: Loma Grabe.

Charlie Olson: She wasn't born when that took place.

Bob Zybach: No. Neither were you if it was 1870's.

Charlie Olson: But my brother went to school and his picture is on that. He is ten years older than I.

Bob Zybach: He was going to that school ten years before this one was built.

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay that's.

Charlie Olson: He's holding something that he had gotten from the teacher, I don't know what it is, it couldn't have been a certificate. . . I don't know what it was. Award of Honor or something. And Moore is on that picture.

Bob Zybach: Gan. . . you went to school here, you walked here, we can see Bakers Mountain there and we've covered the routes you've covered on it and you've said these people here, you can't remember when they built their house?

Charlie Olson: Well, I would . . . I hate to guess at it. That's what I'm pert near apt to do.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Did they live in a house before this house? Because she was playing music about 1908, this house. . . does it look like.

Charlie Olson: Dorgan himself lived here, he was single, he lived back there on that hill, you can't see it now from this shed, but there's a hill over there and there was a house on top of it and that whole works before that lived in that house and this one wasn't here.

Bob Zybach: Okay that house. . . can we back up and look at that. That house back there where Dorgan lived then, that's the one I'm interested in. That's where he got that house from the people before him. That was the old house. Okay. That's the Alfred Writsman's homestead. That's what we've been tiying

Charlie Olson: There's no house there now.

Bob Zybach: Yeah. Where would that be from here?

Charlie Olson: I think there's another house built there now.

Bob Zybach: Okay.