Fanno Creek - History

History

The first people of the Fanno Creek watershed were the Atfalati or Tualaty tribe of the Kalapuya, or "long grass" people, who inhabited large parts of the Willamette Valley for up to 10,000 years before the arrival of non-indigenous people. The valleys of the Willamette River and its major tributaries such as the Tualatin River consisted of open grassland maintained by annual burning, with scattered groves of trees along the rivers and creeks. The Kalapuya moved from place to place in good weather to fish, to hunt small animals, birds, waterfowl, deer, and elk, and to gather nuts, seeds, roots, and berries. Important foods included camas and wapato. In addition to fishing for eels, suckers, and trout, the Atfalati traded for salmon from Chinookan tribes near Willamette Falls. During the winter, the Kalapuya lived in longhouses in settled villages. Their population was greatly reduced after contact in the late 18th century with Europeans, who carried smallpox, syphilis, and malaria. Added pressure came from white settlers who seized and fenced native land, regarded it as private property, and sometimes punished natives for trespassing. Of the original population of 1,000 to 2,000 Atfalati reported in 1780, only 65 remained in 1851. In 1855, the U.S. government sent the survivors to the Grande Ronde reservation further west.

Fanno Creek is named after Augustus Fanno, the first European American settler along the creek. In 1847, he started an onion farm on a 640-acre (260 ha) donation land claim in what later became part of Beaverton. Other 19th century newcomers along the creek engaged mainly in logging, farming, and dairy farming until the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Oregon Electric Railway lines made the watershed more accessible for urban development around the turn of the 20th century. The Oregon Electric, a 49-mile (79 km) system built between 1903 and 1915, ran between downtown Portland and Garden Home in the Fanno Creek watershed, where it split into branches leading to Salem and Forest Grove. The Southern Pacific began running electric passenger trains, known as the Red Electric, in the watershed in 1914. The company that eventually became Portland General Electric installed electric service in the area, and by 1915 the population of the upper Fanno Creek neighborhoods of Multnomah, Maplewood, Hillsdale, and West Portland Park had grown to 2,000.

Passenger service on the Red Electric line ended in 1929, and the Oregon Electric Railway ceased passenger operations in 1933. Private autos largely replaced interurban rail service. Oregon Highway 217 between Durham and Beaverton, and Oregon Highway 10 between Beaverton and Portland, follow the creek. Although passenger rail ceased for nearly 80 years, freight trains continued to use the tracks. In 2009, a new rail passenger service began along a former Oregon Electric line owned by Portland and Western Railroad in Washington County. The Westside Express Service (WES) runs 14.7 miles (23.7 km) between Beaverton on the north and Wilsonville on the south. The middle stretch of this run lies close to the lower 8 miles (13 km) of Fanno Creek between Beaverton and Durham. WES is the first modern commuter rail in Oregon and one of the few suburb-to-suburb commuter rail lines in the United States. At the northern end of the line, WES connects to the MAX Blue Line, an east-west light rail line linking Hillsboro and Gresham via Portland and the MAX Red Line, with connections to Portland International Airport.

The highways and railroads serve a population that increased most dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. When Beaverton became a city in 1893, it had a population of 400. By 2010, the number had soared to 87,000, although not all of them lived in the watershed. Tigard, which did not exist as a city until 1961, grew to 41,000 by the year 2000, all in the watershed. The estimated population of the entire watershed reached 123,000 just before the 2000 census. Fanno Creek, which had few people living near it until 1850, "is surrounded by the most populous region in Oregon".