15.. The Vandersanten Place

Bob Zybach: Well, this map just fits in with everything that I. . .

Norman Hindes: This here is put together ideal. That's ideal. That's exactly the way it was.

Bob Zybach: Okay so I think we've come in from. . . Oh the Lewisburg Saddle side. We haven't come into the... Did, was that road in place there? The one over the Lewisburg Saddle? At that time it would've gone up and from Sulphur Springs it would've turned left and gone into Corvallis that way.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] I don't think so. We kids were all over that country you know. Some of it with road and some of it without so I remember there was an old Bohemia mill down on the Corvallis side of that range fairly well up into the valley. Oh, maybe two-thirds of the way towards the summit.

Bob Zybach: A Bohemia mill?

Charles Hindes: Yes. Almost as the crow flies. Almost due east. Well, not quite due east. East and a little bit north of Sulphur Springs. Just straight through the hill but I don't think that that road was through there in those days because I can remember going out there and getting on some of those bald hillsides and rolling rocks down and tearing the hell out of the farmers fence. Primarily just to watch those big rocks roll you know and I don't think there was any road. . .

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] Never really thought about it you know just kids rolling rocks and we [were] finally found when the old farmer got next to us.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] But I don't think that road was through there then.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So. Then nobody's living by Sulphur Springs or maybe somebody but Vincents at this end Vandersantens directly across from the school and then Hildebrand and Brown then Alvie Govier and who was right across the street from the school?

15. The Vandersanten Place

Charles Hindes: Well, this is not really across the street. This house we're looking is the Vandersanten house and it would be oh probably two or three hundred feet upstream from the present schoolhouse.

Bob Zybach: Okay and this house is still here isn't it?

Charles Hindes: Yes. That house is still there and then the road that led over to the Vandersanten's stock barn. They had a stock barn. Took off on the north side of the house, fairly close to the house and across the Soap Creek road and downstream a little is where the wooden tram road started going up into the mill. It was fairly close to the present driveway.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Now, the Vandersantens. Was there a old house or anything back by the stock barn?

Charles Hindes: There was and I can't remember what it looked like. It was kind of a tumbled down one and I thought I saw the remains of it recently.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] The Vandersantens, too, went over to Tillamook and bought a hotel at Bay City.

Bob Zybach: Oh, so they left the area, too.

Reading other Soap Creek Valley histories would indicate a road did exist from Lewisburg to Sulphur Springs in 1928-30. We were not aware of the Bohemia/Sulphur Springs Section. - C.H.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] Shortly after we did.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] Was it before or after? Before.

Bob Zybach: What kind of stock were they raising?

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] As I remember, it was pretty much beef cattle and I don't remember that they had a pure bred strain, but I wouldn't say that they didn't have. It seemed like a bunch of cross bred animals.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] Bob, what's this supposed to be here?

Bob Zybach: Well, that might be the Vandersanten. . . The older house. It's the Moore family about 1899 or 1900 in the Vandersanten place. Now this is a school [Historic Soap Creek Valley Auto Tour, p:22]. This is where the Soap Creek Schoolhouse. What it looked like in 1900. That closed down for a lot of years, including the years that you went to school, and then it opened back up again.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] Is it close to the present location?

Bob Zybach: Yes and right across the road from what was the Moore's in those days and then the Vandersanten's.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] When did the Vandersantens come in there?

Bob Zybach: This is the first I've heard of them, so they came in after World War I. There was another family that lived in this house here, and built that house, and she taught piano. I'm not thinking of her name right now, but I could probably find it fairly quick. But the Vandersantens. This is the first I've heard about them, Let see here. I've got Charlie Olson's [Charlie Olson: Monograph #7, pp:138-139] "Dorgans." The Dorgans lived there where you say the Vandersantens were living, and then Bakers lived between the Vandersantens and the Vincents, but that was in 1900. So, it was, things changed quite a bit