Tigard’s Historical Fanno Creek

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Augustus Fanno (1804-1884) (left) and Rebecca Denney Fanno (1819-1909) Courtesy of the Tigard Historical Association
Augustus Fanno (1804-1884) (left) and Rebecca Denney Fanno (1819-1909) Courtesy of the Tigard Historical Association
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Fanno Creek in Tigard is named after Augustus Fanno who received a donation land claim in 1847 in the Tigard area after migrating to Oregon from Missouri. His grandfather had fled the French Revolution and migrated to Maine in 1789. Augustus was born in Maine in 1804, briefly becoming a seaman and then a teacher in Mississippi and Missouri, where he married Martha Ferguson in 1833. They had a son, Eugene, in 1841. 

The Fanno family left Independence, Missouri, for Oregon in 1846, crossing the Oregon Trail and, after six months, reaching the Columbia River. Martha Fanno died in childbirth upon arrival and was buried in Linn City.  The widowed Augustus, with his young son, worked his Tigard land claim and remarried Rebecca Jane Denney (1819-1909) in 1851. Rebecca was the daughter of Fielding and Jane (Hicklin) Denney and had been a teacher who ventured west in 1849. Her brother Thomas Denney farmed a land claim next door to that of Augustus Fanno. Today, Denney Road recalls this pioneering family. 

Together, Augustus and Rebecca Fanno prospered cultivating yellow Danver onions on their farm. They hired local laborers, paying them in supplies.  They would have six children. Fanno Creek, which bears their name, ran through their property as a tributary of the Tualatin River and earlier had supported an Atfalati Kalapuya Indian campsite. 

The Fannos worked with the local Indians, who taught them to fish for trout in the Creek, and the local Indians traded their labor on the Fanno Farm for supplies. The Kalapuyans are a linguistic group that occupied the valley between the Coast Range and the Cascades. The picture of the Atfalati Indians in front of their tule mat teepee is typical of the Atfalati Kalapuyan summer houses that had occupied a campsite on the Fanno property.  

Eventually, the Fannos built a framed house in 1859 surrounded by a white picket fence, which today is located off Hall Boulevard.  Fanno Farmhouse has been restored at 8405 SW Creekside Place in the Creekside Corporate Center just east of the Hall-Greenway intersection and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The Fanno Farmhouse was restored by the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District. Even though they had stopped producing onions in the 1940s, the Fanno family lived there until 1974, and in March 1982, they donated the house and surrounding property to the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District (THPRD).

Augustus Fanno was known as the Onion King of the region, so vast were his crops. He drained Beaver Lake, which covered nearly half of the future site of Beaverton, Oregon. By draining swamps and lowland ponds populated with beavers, Fanno was able to make the region livable and healthier with reliable sources of fresh clear water.  The Atfalatis called their home Chakeipi or Place of the Beaver (hence Beaverton). 

The Indians hunted and fished and gathered camas bulbs, wapato tubers, and acorns, which they traded with the early pioneers. They built multifamily pole lodges during the winter. The Atfalati tribes of early Beaverton and East Butte (early Tigard), along with other Indian groups ceded their lands to the U.S. government in 1855 through the Willamette Valley Treaty. They were removed to the Grande Ronde Reservation.

Agustus Fanno improved his land, built outbuildings and barns, and hired additional laborers to increase production. He became a man of influence within the community and spearheaded the development of Canyon Road between Beaverton and Portland to transport his produce. He donated land to Beaverton’s first school district. The school’s first textbooks were imported from missionary sources in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). Augustus Fanno rose to be Beaverton’s deputy sheriff and served as a local teacher and trusted political leader. Because of the location of the Fanno donation land claim, Augustus Fanno, who died in 1884, was influential in both Beaverton and Tigard and the histories of the two communities were intertwined. 

Hall Blvd near Fanno Creek was named for Lawrence and Lucy Hall, friends of the Fannos, who had come as pioneers across the Oregon Trail using the Meek Cutoff route. They took up the first land claim of 640 acres in the Tigard area in 1847. They built a homestead and a grist mill near Walker Road. The region of Cipole (meaning onion) reminds us that Cipollini onions were grown in our community.

The Fanno Creek Greenway Trail is planned to be 15 miles of hiking trails linking five cities—Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin, Durham, and SW Portland. The trail will run between the Willamette River in the SW section of Portland and Fanno Creek’s confluence at the Tualatin River. The Fanno Creek Park Trail stretches from Main Street in downtown Tigard to the Tigard Public Library. The history of this famous Creek remains all around us.

Visit www.tigardhistorical.org to become a member, volunteer, or for more information about the Tigard Historical Association.

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