Soap Creek Valley · Place
Tampico
Everything the Soap Creek narrators said about Tampico: 100 transcript mentions across 14 records, grouped by who was speaking.
- Index references (printed indexes)
- 9
- Transcript mentions
- 100
The map could not load. The list below carries the same places.
Provenance
- Coordinates
- 44.68530, -123.23353
- How they were found
- coordinate taken as the centre of the township–range–section Bob names
- How far to trust it
- inferred
- Home site of
- Eugene Glender
- Accessioned
- From Bob Zybach’s upload, 23 August 2026
Home site
On Map 9 of the 1999 thesis this is plotted as the home site of Eugene Glender .
Who speaks of it
- Auto Tour, 1989 p. 13, p. 14, p. 15, p. 16, p. 17, p. 23
- Charles Hindes and Norman Hindes p. 3, p. 17, p. 19, p. 23, p. 34, p. 40, p. 52
- Charlie Olson and Mrs. Olson p. 39, p. 50, p. 83, p. 90, p. 91, p. 123, p. 124, p. 125, p. 127, p. 129
- Donald M. Dickey and Maxine Dickey p. 15, p. 25, p. 43
- Eugene Glender p. 3, p. 8, p. 13, p. 38, p. 39, p. 56, p. 93, p. 111, p. 112, p. 117
- James Hanish p. 23, p. 34
- John Jacob "Jake" Rohner and Wilma "Willie" Rohner p. 11, p. 13, p. 27, p. 28, p. 42, p. 51, p. 53, p. 83, p. 84
- Lorna Grabe p. 12
- Marvin Rowley p. 34, p. 35, p. 36
- Neil Elton Vanderburg p. 27, p. 39, p. 53, p. 63, p. 70, p. 79, p. 85, p. 86, p. 120, p. 124, p. 126, p. 127
- Velma Carter Rawie p. 35, p. 57, p. 67, p. 74, p. 75, p. 84
- Wanda Marcks Cook, Roy Cook, and Evelyn Weigel p. 9, p. 44
- William A. Davies p. 17, p. 19
- Zybach 1999 thesis p. 9, p. 13, p. 29, p. 37, p. 53, p. 77, p. 79, p. 81, p. 93, p. 107, p. 112, p. 139, p. 140, p. 142, p. 143, p. 148, p. 151, p. 168, p. 187, p. 191, p. 204, p. 219, p. 231, p. 234, p. 319, p. 320, p. 321
In their words
The view is from the south, with Tampico School on the hill to the west (left) and Coffin Butte to the northeast (right).
The location of the school varied from the intersection of Tampico and Sulphur Springs Roads [Stop #5] and this stop, with at least 2 additional locations in between.
Dated statements about this place
- 1850s — Daniel F. Beauy may have been a distant relation to the Beatty family that homesteaded in the Tampico area during the 1850s.
- 1850 — Now the Browns went back there till the 1850's, and Tampico the town was there in the late 1850's, right before the Civil War, and there were a lot of stories about Tampico.
- 1853 — In 1853, David D. Davis started a store and stage station beside a spring among the oak trees.
- 1853 — the old road Ic. 1853] used to go from about that corner and run straight
- 1855 — An attempt to create a small town in The Valley during the mid-1850s quickly failed for a variety of economic, geographical, and political reasons.
- 1856 — This home may have been built as early as 1856 by the William Beatty family.
- 1857 — Town of Tampico platted along California Trail/Territorial Road
- 1857 — The Tampico Song was read, sung and otherwise repeated verbatim in Soap Creek Valley in the late 1850s, following the creation of the town of Tampico in 1857 (see Chapter III; Davis & Davis 1978); perhaps it was even written there.
- 1857-10-27 — Tampico was platted October 27, 1857 by William J. Crouch and shut down on January 23, 1860 by Green Berry Smith, who had purchased it earlier in the day.
- 1857-11-16 — The plat for the town was filed with the county clerk on November 16, 1857, but the town was probably laid out several years earlier.
- 1858 — This song is said to have been written by a Tampico school teacher, Frank McDonough, in 1858. It was sung, nearly verbatim, in Soap Creek Valley at the time of Oregon statehood, immediately preceding the Civil War.
- 1860 — Tampico, c. 1860. This watercolor was painted by William Ball in 1925 under the direction of OfAC history professor, John Homer, based upon the memories of several 1850s-era Tampico residents.
- 1860 — McDonough was found cremated in his cabin on a nearby land claim— thought to have been murdered by several local residents—and this incident is believed to have had a bearing on Green Berry Smith’s closure of the town in 1860.
- 1860-01-23 — Tampico was officially a town for less than three years.
- 1860-01-23 — the townsite came into the possession of Green Berry Smith, by whom the plat was annulled and canceled on January 23, 1860.
- 1861 — After the town was disbanded in 1861 (Zybach 1989; Zybach & Meranda 1989), it is unlikely many people bothered to sing or repeat the Tampico Song; several however, thought it worth preserving, and it has continued to survive in many forms of publications.
- 1885 — By 1885, Tampico had become a "ghost town." Only the local tavern and several colorful stories remained.
- 1885 — By 1885 David Fagan was already designating Tampico as a "has-been" in the county
- 1885 — But the glory of Tampico has departed, and for years past it has been a pasture for browsing cattle and nibbling sheep; only a few dilapidated houses remain (p. 455).
- 1904 — The Arcade Saloon, 1904
- 1904 — Wanda Marcks was a 9 years old when her family moved to the Tampico area of the Soap Creek Valley in 1904.
- 1905/1910 — It was known as the "Smith house" when the Glenders purchased it between 1905 and 1910
- 1905 — I think she taught in Tampico in, like 1905, or something.
- 1910 — Sometime before 1910, they had arrived in the Soap Creek Valley, purchased 400 acres and an old farmhouse at the corner of Tampico and Soap Creek roads, and started farming as a partnership.
- 1911 — Oh, I don't know, 1911 or something like that. Yeah, it would have been in 1911 or something like that, '10 or '11 or '08.
- 1920 — Will Glender was burning gift wrapping paper in the fireplace the Sunday morning after Christmas in 1920 when the flue caught fire and burned the house down.
- 1920s — When I was just a little kid it was.
- 1920 — Charlie and Selma had two girls, Elvera and Leone, before their Tampico farmhouse burned down in 1920.
- 1923 — No, the 1920's was when I was born. In 1923.
- 1923 — Early Tampico school photograph (1923) by Laura Glender shong infant Gene Glender, teacher Lottie Blake, and Mother Selma Glender.
- 1924 — "When conditions warranted, both schools would operate simultaneously, as occurred between 1924 and 1941." - If memory serves me correctly we walked from the logging camp we visited with you to the "Tampico" school (jct: Tampico Rd and Soap Creek Rd.) for the 1927 school year.
- 1925 — This watercolor, painted under the direction of historian John Horner in 1925, attempts to depict Tampico about the time of the Civil War.
- 1928 — In the 1928 school year Alvie Govier converted a Model T truck into a school bus and transported the farm and mill kids to "Tampico with Mrs. Montgomery as teacher.
- 1940 — Bottom Right. Gene Glender (Glender 1994) at family farm, 1940. Note old-growth savannah oak and barn (Zybach et al., 1990; Sardell, Sears, & Watson 1999) in the background (see Map 9).
- 1942 — The united Glender families moved to Albany in 1942 and were never allowed to return to their Tampico home.
- 1960s — Marvin Rowley (1979) remembers a school house that was still at the townsite as late as the 1960's. It was used for storage at that time.
- 1989 — Gene Glender and Jan Meranda stand in front of a depression to the north of the Glender house. As a child, Gene was told that the depression was the site of an early day Tampico tavern.
- 1989-05-27 — BZ 5/27/89 [date lettered on Bob Zybach's location note added to the 1857 Tampico plat]
- 1990-01-06 — January 6, 1990 Tour
- 1992 — The house was moved in 1992, not long after Bob and I first began our search for the "lost" town of Tampico.
How to cite this item
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- As printed
- The Zybach Collection, Soap Creek Valley series: Tampico (place record).
- This page
- Soap Creek Valley: Tampico. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/places/tampico/
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