Soap Creek Valley · Timeline
1845–1859
1845–1859. 97 dated statements, each one printed exactly as it was said or written, with the narrator and the page.
- 1845
David "Uncle Davey" Carson, the Irish Mountain Man, guided families through a snowy pass south of Mount Hood during the fall of 1845.
- 1845
That winter William Berry guarded a cache of goods along the same trail - which became known as the "Barlow Toll Road" when it was completed the following spring.
- 1845
Pictures such as this, first published in 1845, gave rise to Oregon's reputation as a land of giant evergreen trees.
- 1845-1846
Construction of the Applegate and Barlow Trails during 1845 and 1846 avoided these dangerous rapids and provided American emigrants with a safer and cheaper passage to their new homes in the Willamette Valley.
- 1845
Nathaniel Wilson died 26 June 1845, just several months after his father's death.
- 1845
Joseph T. Hughart (1804-1886) came to Oregon with his family along the northern route of the Oregon Trail in 1845.
- 1845
I am the great granddaughter of Tolbert and Martha Angeline Carter, who were. . . came out in 1845 I believe it was and settled on a Donation Land Claim in the Palestine. . .
- 1845
In 1845, Mrs. Carter's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Leander Belieu, and seven children started the long trek across the plains to what was known then as the Oregon country.
- 1845
Now did she come out in 1845 also?
- 1846
Morgan Savage and Tolbert Carter ... helped construct the Applegate Trail from Fort Hall in Idaho to the Willamette Valley in 1846.
- 1846
Five years later, in 1846, when Jesse Applegate, Moses "Black" Harris, Levi Scott and a dozen other men were establishing the "Applegate Trail" for American pioneers, they followed the same course taken by Douglas and the Wilkes Expedition.
- 1846
the Mennonites had renamed Savage Creekname for 1846 Applegate Trail Pioneer, Morgan Savageto the "South Fork" of Berry Creek because it sounded more "civilized."
- 1846
He established a Donation Land Claim to the west of Coffin Butte in 1846 with his wife, Martha "Anna" (Henderson) Hughart (1808- 1846)
- 1846/1853
1846-1853, southern route [or ttsouth Roadtt] of the Oregon Trail.
- 1846
The following chapters on "Pioneer Days" were prepared by Mr. Tolbert Carter, an honored pioneer of 1846, and for a great many years a resident of Benton County, and were originally published in a local paper of that county.
- 1846
In early life he removed to Illinois, and started from Morgan County, in that state, to Oregon in March, 1846.
- 1846
In response to your request I will give some sketches of my journey across the plains from Illinois to Oregon in 1846.
- 1846/1858
The Cook lands of 1910-1925 includes portions of the 1846-1858 pioneer claims of George M.
- 1846
The Marcks family farm encompassed much of the 1846 David Carson Donation Land Claim and subsequently became part of Camp Adair during World War II.
- 1846
The advent of settlement and subsequent conversion of Soap Creek Valley lands to livestock pasturage in the mid-1840s put an end to Indian burning practices.
- 1846
When the first American emigrants settled in Soap Creek Valley in 1846, Klickitat Indians (who had owned horses for several decades and had associated with white trappers for nearly 40 years) were claiming ownership of the Willamette Valley, having “conquered” the decimated Kalapuyans (Fagan 1885; Minto 1903; Rawie 1994).
- 1846
The settlement of Soap Creek Valley by American pioneers in 1846 was quickly followed by establishment of permanent homes, fences, plowed fields, wagon roads, orchards, and the eviction of remaining local Indian families (Longwood 1940).
- 1846
Bear and wolves were systematically exterminated from the area through hunting (Fagan 1885; Storm 1941), blacktail deer replaced whitetail deer (Poesch 1961), and orchardgrass, bachelor buttons, and vetch spread outward from the settlers’ lawns and fields (Glender 1994).
- 1846
Kalapuyan burning was replaced by mass livestock grazing, and prairies remained largely free of tree seedlings and brush (see Figs. 18 and 24).
- 1846
First pioneer settlers in Soap Creek Valley
- 1846-03
In early life he moved to Illinois and started from Morgan county in that state to Oregon in March of 1846.
- 1847
The following year, David D. Davis brought his family to the Soap Creek Valley along the same route.
- 1847
The Soap Creek School District is reputed to be the oldest in Benton County, with some authorities placing its beginning in a log structure erected during the fall of 1847.
- 1847
2 Hamen Lewis (1847-?) was reputed to be "The first white child born in Benton County".
- 1847
This brings us to the first of March, 1847.
- 1848
The Gold Rush to California in 1848 further defined the route for the stage coaches and produce wagons of the 1850's.
- 1848
Eliza J. (1828-1849) Smith (she married fellow pioneer, Green Berry Smith in 1848)
- 1848
There are some portions of donation land claims within the school area, and these are areas that were homesteaded or settled before the Homestead Act, which, the Homestead Act was 1848, was it, or 1849?
- 1848
I think most of them ended about 1848, and of course the Donation Land Claim gives the settlers I think 640 acres, but he could lay it out any way he wanted to.
- 1848
Last major forest fire in Soap Creek Valley
- 1849
By the time Oregon became a U.S. Territory in 1849, most of the surrounding farmland had been claimed by emigrant families that had arrived overland along the Oregon Trail.
- 1849
In this manner, William Berry sold his claim near Oregon City and moved to the Soap Creek area in 1849.
- 1849
The Wellsdale site, originally pioneered by Tolbert Carter by 1849, became part of Camp Adair in 1941.
- 1849
He was married to Josephine Sager on 8 September 1849.
- 1850
Many homesteads in Oregon were bought, sold, and traded before the enactment of the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850.
- 1850
The first pioneers in Benton County settled here in the 1840's, the first black child was born here before 1850, and confederate sympathizers met here at the outbreak of the Civil War.
- 1850s
I think this goes back to the gold rush in 1850's when the stages used to run through the area.
- 1850s
Because I think that road's been in there since the 1850's.
- 1850
I think they hauled lumber over that in 1850.
- 1850
These people here think this house was built in 1850.
- 1850
Strange as it may seem, it is my candid opinion that from the first settlement of this country tifi 1850, the time when gold commenced flooding the country from California, was the happiest days the country has ever seen.
- 1850
Mrs. Carter was married to Mr. Carter in 1850 in Polk county and two years later they moved to Benton county, where they located on a farm near Palestine hill.
- 1850s
Daniel F. Beauy may have been a distant relation to the Beatty family that homesteaded in the Tampico area during the 1850s.
- 1850
So maybe from the 1850's to the 1870's, about twenty years in there they just wore the soil out?
- 1850
[PHIL] That's going back to 1850's. Well Highland Road wasn't there then. Hilltop Road was about in there in 1853. [PHIL] But it wasn't a road, per Se. Not in our sense, no.
- 1850s
Ponderosa pine] in the 1850's, do you ever remember seeing any pine?
- 1850
And that name goes back to 1850.
- 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.
- 1850
This area here was all prairie in 1850.
- 1850
The family came to Illinois about 1850, and on west the next generations.
- 1850s
The surveyors of the 1850s described McDonald Forest area as open savanna oak forest for the most part.
- 1850s
For instance, the original survey in the 1850s identified as much as six degrees variation along the west line of Section 6, T11S, R5W at the head of Soap Creek.
- 1850
The Donation Act was around 1850, as I recall.
- 1850
It was surveyed and the Homestead Act required them to take up surveyed areas, but I don’t remember any Donation Land Claims that go beyond 1850 at all.
- 1850
In 1850, it would have been an open oak forest.
- 1850
That’s all you know about from before 1850?
- 1850
The ecology of the area—in 1850, we were looking at a savanna-type of forest in oak.
- 1850s
That was in the 1850s, and he sold it to a son-in-law.
- 1851
I've got maps of Portland from 1851 where there was forest fires within our city limits now.
- 1851-05
...were probably counted among the 44 individuals counted during the May, 1851 treat negotiations (Mackey 1974; see Chapter III; Map 13) at Champoeg, Oregon.
- 1852
This name here on this Peak in the 1852 survey is called Smith Peak.
- 1852
[KEVIN] About 1852 are we looking at, that blacksmith shop from your list?
- 1852
Well, I think by 1852 they were taking up the area.
- 1852
Private land and road surveys are formalized and PLS initiated in The Valley
Sources disagree
- 1852-08-13
He was married to Mrs. Martha Angeline Bileui on August 13, 1852.
- 1852-08-13
He was married to Mrs. Martha Angeline Bileui on August 13, 1852, and made his permanent home afew miles north of the City of Corvallis.
- 1853
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.
- 1853
This stop is along an 1853 stretch of the "Applegate Trail" that connected "rainy season" crossings of Berry and Soap Creeks.
- 1853
By facing to the east from this stop, you can see the crest of the hill called "Smith Peak" by the government land surveyor in 1853.
Sources disagree
- 1853
Well they came in 1853.
- 1853
they wanted wood and water." There was still good land out here in the valley, I'm sure, in 1853.
- 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
- 1853
Hilltop Road was about in there in 1853. [PHIL] But it wasn't a road, per Se. Not in our sense, no.
- 1853
Okay, what I was trying to explain is the 1853 maps show Hilltop Road where Highland Way is now. And then it showed a route going out around what we call the Jackson Frazier wetlands, back in 1853. So people traveling out of Corvallis that hit those wetlands, went up the route we've been talking about, and connected to a
Sources disagree
- 1853
And then it showed a route going out around what we call the Jackson Frazier wetlands, back in 1853. So people traveling out of Corvallis that hit those wetlands, went up the route we've been talking about, and connected to a road that was called Hilltop Road. In 1853. And that's what became Highland Way in 1905. [PHIL] So what
- 1853
In 1853. And that's what became Highland Way in 1905. [PHIL] So what did they do, they went up sort of like up where Highway 99 is now till they got to sort of the ridge the hospital is on and then turned west to go around that marshy area down there? Yep. [PHIL] And so then they would go
- 1853
Map 22 shows the original locations of pioneer homes, orchards, fields, and wagon roads—and new property boundaries—that had been established by landowners between 1846 and 1853 (see Maps 2, 5, and 10; Table D.2).
- 1853
Note the extent of the conifer forest is about the same as 27 years earlier (Map 21), but virtually all savannah and prairie lands have been converted to fenced crops (to reduce open range livestock damage) and unfenced pasture by local residents.
- 1853
Upper Right. 1853: firewood, grain crops, orchards, pasturage, wood homes.
- 1853
Table D.2 lists pioneer Soap Creek Valley landowners of 1853, as listed in public land survey records (Hathorn 1854a; 1854b), census rolls (Moore 1947), and local histories (Fagan 1885).
Sources disagree
- 1854
At that place during the following year a post office, under the name of Soap Creek, was established. Davis was appointed as the postmaster.
- 1855/1856
In 1855 or 1856 a miner from the gold fields of California stopped at a Corvallis saloon to fortify himself for the remainder of the journey to Salem, where he was to visit his sweetheart.
- 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
In 1856 most Kalapuyans were moved to the Grand Ronde reservation, near Sheridan, in Polk County, where they were forced to spend the remainder of their lives.
- 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
the Beatty fir trees (reputed to have been planted in 1858 along the old wagon road to the California gold mines) are seen to the immediate east of the home.
- 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.
