Page 18
October 2013
The Charbonneau Villager
Big Development in a Small Country Town
Looking Back . . .
A Series of Historical Vignettes
on Charbonneau and the Area
MICK SCOTT
Cars zipped up and
down busy Interstate 5 in
1971, but there was little
reason for anyone to stop
in Wilsonville.
Truckers, however,
pulled off the freeway at
the largest truck stop on
the West Coast, now the
site of Argyle Square. At
the corners of Wilsonville
and Boones Ferry roads an intersection that locals
called Four Corners - was
a small gasoline station
at the southeast corner,
doing business since the
mid-1920s as one the ?rst
gas stations in the state.
Across the street on the
southwest portion of the
intersection was Lowrie's,
the ?rst shopping center in Wilsonville. On the
northwest corner was the
Silver Leaf Inn, the scene
of occasional bar brawls
that included at least one
shooting. On the freeway's
east side were the Kopper
Kitchen and another gas
station. But, other than
these side stops, there
wasn't much that attracted
people to Wilsonville. The
town's population at the
time was 1,000.
But, something big was
going on. Clouds of dust
rose above farm ?elds
during the late summer of
1971 as the blades of earth
graders sculpted the land
that would become Charbonneau.
The 477 acres had been
occupied by timber, wheat,
hops and a large turkey
farm. The acreage was
originally the 1852 Donation Land Claim of George
Law Curry, territorial governor when Oregon became
a state in 1859, and his
wife Chloe Boone Curry.
The Currys sold their property in 1874 to Jonathan
Wagner. His nephew, Fred
Wagner, took over farm operations in 1912 at age 19.
Willamette Factors, the
developers of Charbonneau, moved quietly in
the preparation of land
critically important for
the development. Factors
pushed for the land to be
annexed into the city of
Wilsonville; and in March
1971, the city expanded its
tax base by the annexation
of the proposed development. In exchange, the
new residents would receive the bene?ts of sewer,
water, other utilities and
city services. The council's
action moved the city limits
of Wilsonville from the Willamette River, south to the
middle of Miley Road. The
land that had previously
been an Aurora address
now became part of Wilsonville.
So it was that on September 14, 1971, Willamette Factors held a news
conference at the Benson
Hotel in downtown Portland to announce the start
of one of the most distinctive housing developments in the Northwest.
Charbonneau was to be
developed under the recreational second home concept, much like Sunriver
and Black Butte Ranch in
Central Oregon and Salishan on the Oregon Coast.
But, with one big difference: Charbonneau would
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