Killin Wetlands, Banks, Oregon
From rare soils, to Native Americans on the land, to dairying to today: details and a historic timeline behind a newly open Metro natural area
Note: I did this raw research in 2015 to be used for interpretive signage when Killin Wetlands opens to the public. It’s presented here, for anyone interested in learning about the history of this beautiful site in western Washington County, Oregon.
History of Killin Wetlands
Killin Wetlands, west of Banks, Oregon, is a natural area owned by Metro, the Portland-area regional government. Its 590 acres along the West Fork Dairy Creek are in the northwest portion of the Tualatin River Valley. The natural area consists of wetlands, at 120 foot elevation in a narrow floodplain depression, as well as surrounding forested and farmed uplands ranging up to about 500 feet in elevation. Within the natural area, at 46280 NW Cedar Canyon Road is the former Kistner Farms dairy. Killin is the largest remaining peat soil wetlands in the Willamette Valley, and one of the last scrub-shrub marshes. Eventually, its restored English gambrel barn will open as a base for visitors and students to explore the wetlands, with parking, trails, boardwalks, interpretive displays and bird blind. Parts of the natural area will remain in cultivation of wheat and other crops, maintaining the land’s agricultural legacy.
Watershed and topography
Killin Wetlands are within the Tualatin River watershed, and are fed in part by Sadd and Park Farms creeks, which flow from the surrounding uplands into the larger Cedar Canyon Creek. It, in turn, is a tributary to West Fork Dairy Creek. The West Fork joins East Fork north of Cornelius and flows as Dairy Creek into the Tualatin River near Hillsboro.
The 83-mile-long Tualatin River flows out of the eastern slopes of the Coast Range. It and its tributaries drain a 712-square mile area bounded by the Tualatin Mountains on the north, the Coast Range on the west and the Chehalem Mountains on the south. After the initial drop from the surrounding hills, the river and its tributaries travel over a rich floodplain at a low gradient. Beaver activity over the millennia created many areas within the valley of large, perennially flooded wetlands that have developed a deep, high-organic peat layer. Killin Wetlands is one of the few remaining examples of this ecosystem. It is similar to other nearby wetlands such as Wapato Lake.
During the Missoula Floods of the last Ice Age (approximately 15,000 years ago), floodwaters exploding out of the Columbia River Gorge poured into the Willamette Valley, filling it as far south as Eugene (100 miles away). Along their southward path, the waters found an entrance into the Tualatin Valley at present day Lake Oswego. In the various flood events, the Tualatin Valley was inundated up to 350 feet in depth. Rich sediments were deposited as floodwaters receded out of the valley along the course of the present Tualatin River, Tonquin Scablands and Gaston Gap.
Until agriculture changed the hydrology of the Tualatin Valley, the Tualatin River flooded the valley routinely.
Based on maps and descriptions from the 1850s General Land Office surveys, the Killin Wetland site was a mix of shrub and herbaceous dominated swamp in the lower wetlands and mixed coniferous and deciduous forest on higher ground. Some of these habitats remain today.
At Killin, wetlands are largely underlain with Labish soils — a type of organic “beaver soil” with areas of Wapato soil on the higher western regions of the wetlands. The site’s upper wetland soil layer, comprised largely of peat, was severely damaged when it was dewatered beginning in the 1870s (or 1890s) for grazing purposes. The thick Labish soil area in the emergent and aquatic wetland habitat has oxidized and subsided by 1–2 meters because of the dewatering. This converted the heart of the wetlands from the shallow shrub wetland swamp described in the 1850 General Land Office surveys to a deeper lakebed. The full recovery of the wetlands will happen only after the organic soil layer has re-accumulated, a process of decades or centuries duration.
Plants and wildlife
A small collection of Willamette Valley peat-laden wetlands such as Killin Wetlands, Lake Labish and Wapato Lake supported several typically montane or coastal plants not found elsewhere in the Willamette Valley. They include Geyer willow (Salix geyeriana), bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata, Oregon bentgrass (Agrostis oregonensis) and narrowleaf cattail (Typha augustifolia).
Because Lake Labish and Wapato Lake were heavily developed for agriculture and other purposes, Killin Wetlands persists as perhaps the last relatively unaltered remnant of these wetlands. Other rare species that grow at Killin Wetlands include: Carex amplifoliam, Juncus nevadensis, and Salix geyeriana.
Camas grows in the newer acquisition. Reed canarygrass, an invasive species, was introduced to the site in the 1930s as cattle fodder.
Wetlands support wildlife from insects to large mammals, and Killin’s diversity includes: Northern red-legged frogs, Willow flycatcher, waterfowl, native birds and shorebirds, bittern, bald eagles, cutthroat trout, beaver, deer, elk, and possibly black bear.
Nutria and bullfrogs, two non-native species, are present.
Native Americans in the wetlands and prairies of the Tualatin Valley
Killin Wetlands are located in Western Washington County, an area long inhabited by the Atfalati, or Tualatins. They are a tribe of the Kalapuya people, who ranged along much of the Willamette Valley. Tribes within the Kalapuya controlled specific riverine, prairie, savanna and forest habitats, traveling between them seasonally to hunt and harvest. Camas, wild onion and wapato growing in wetlands such as Killin Wetlands were staple foods. Camas bulbs were roasted to bring out their sugars. Wapato’s tuberous roots were also roasted. Perennial wetlands such as Killin would have been major sources for these foods, and it’s likely that either seasonal or permanent settlements were in the vicinity, for harvesting and processing.
Camas root, roasted and pressed into cakes, was an item of trade with other native people, as when the Atfalati traveled in spring to Willamette Falls to trade for salmon. It’s likely that not only was camas harvested but was also actively cultivated and selected to increase yields. Camas has been seen in the wetlands adjacent farmed land east of the Kistner Farm property.
From sites such as Killin Wetlands, Atfalati also harvested grasses, sedges, and rushes to construct baskets and roof seasonal structures. Elk and deer were plentiful, and are seen at Killin Wetlands today. Other wetland animals hunted for food and hides were birds, beaver and otter. Insects such as grasshoppers living in grasses would be roasted and eaten.
The Atfalati also managed areas of the valley with fire, to enhance hunting, seed and nut gathering, resulting in large, parklike expanses of oak prairie and savanna interspersed with wetlands and upland areas.
Sixteen Atfalati villages are known by name: in the Tualatin Plains (Beaverton, Hillsboro, Mountaindale and Forest Grove), the Wapato Valley (Gaston), and the Chehalem and North Yamhill valleys (Newberg, Carlton, Yamhill). Eight of these villages were clustered around Wapato Lake near Gaston. Given its similarity to Wapato Lake, it is not unlikely that a village existed at Killin Wetlands as well.
With European contact, changes came rapidly to the people of the Pacific Northwest — long before settlers arrived. Beginning in the 1700s, coastal people began having contact with the ship trade. The earliest documented epidemic in Oregon was smallpox, probably in 1781, a date corroborated by a major North American epidemic that year, by later observations of white explorers of pockmarked individuals, and an oral tradition from the Clatsop of a shipwreck and the introduction of a spotted disease. Records suggest that the toll on native people was high, perhaps 30 percent, as is typical the first time a disease encounters a population without immunity.
More epidemics in 1800–1801 and 1824 further depleted the populations of Native Americans in northwest Oregon. An 1853 smallpox epidemic struck people throughout the lower Columbia Valley hard, claiming half of the native communities at Chinook and The Dalles.
Malaria — then called fever and ague — also took its toll. It appeared in July 1830 in villages on and around Sauvie Island near Fort Vancouver, where fur trappers carried beaver pelts harvested in the Tualatin Valley for trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. It is likely that people living near Killin Wetlands would have been impacted by the 1830 epidemic, due to the site’s attractiveness to trappers, and, indeed, by 1831 malaria had been documented into the Willamette Valley.
By the 1830s, population estimates, compared with estimates made by Lewis and Clark in 1805, revealed a 90 percent decline in population. Villages were left unpeopled all over the Pacific Northwest. In 1856, treaties removed the surviving Native Americans to reservations. The first census taken at Grand Ronde Reservation near McMinnville, to which Kalapuyans were removed in 1856, shows eleven Kalapuyan “bands” there, with a total population of 344 men, women, and children.
Trapping era
Based on the beaver activity today at Killin Wetlands, the wetlands were likely an often-visited stop on the fur-trapping circuit. Beaver skin had long been a commodity in Europe and Asia, but by the 1600s, beaver had been trapped out in Europe. Eastern North America offered fresh ground, and as beaver populations were decimated there, trappers and traders continually moved west.
In 1811 the Pacific Fur Company was established in Astoria. The North West Company controlled the trade from 1813 to 1821 when it merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company. The HBC’s Fort Vancouver became the region’s main trading post for furs and other goods. Trappers would trap beaver in Tualatin Valley wetlands, skin and dry them, and haul them over the Tualatin Mountains via primitive paths such as the Logie Trail and on skiffs crossing the Multnomah Channel and Columbia River to the fort. This route was likely also used to transport agricultural goods from the Hudson’s Bay Company dairy farm on Dairy Creek to Fort Vancouver. It is probable the creek was named in the fur-trading era.
Most trapping was during winter, when beavers’ fur grows thickest. The trapper would visit the trap often, resetting it over and over until he had trapped out an area.
The fur trade continued to the early 1840s when the Oregon country was trapped out and settlers began arriving in large numbers.
Fur trapping changed wetlands as beaver populations were trapped to near extinction. Beaver dams had altered local hydrology, channel geomorphology, and nutrient composition in streams. The dams increased flooding, and established and maintained marshes and wetlands, which in turn captured stream sediments and processed and stored stream nutrients. Loss of beaver and the ponds and dams they created resulted in fewer streamside marshes and fewer meanders off main channels.
Settlement and agriculture around Banks
In 1840, the non-indigenous population of Oregon was only 137 Americans and 63 French-Canadians. In 1843 these early settlers drafted a constitution that specified a land claim process: married couples could claim 640 acres at no cost and singles could claim 320 acres. This opportunity for free land provided the impetus for many to make the arduous journey to the Oregon Country. The federal Donation Land Act of 1850 confirmed and further codified the land claim process.
From 1842 to 1852, about 18,000 emigrants traveled to Oregon. Two of these settlers were Peyton and Anna Wilkes. In 1847 they took a land claim at present day Banks, in the far northwest reaches of the Tualatin Valley. A community soon developed around their property. Peyton Wilkes chose West Fork Dairy Creek because the Oregon white oaks there supplied tanbark needed for his tanner’s trade. In the 1860s, the town was named Wilkes. In the 1890s, the Wilkes land was sold to the Schulmerich and Banks families who were dairy farmers.
When the Wilkes and other settlers arrived in the Tualatin Valley they found a landscape of prairies, savannas, swamps and creeks. The first ditching of the land at today’s Killin Wetlands took place in the 1870s (or 1890s) with the advent of agriculture at the site. Benton Killin, a Portland attorney, purchased the land in 1872.
In 1901 the Pacific Railway and Navigation Company planned a rail line through John L. and Nancy Banks’ dairy farm. The town was renamed Banks. As with many towns, commercial life centered around the depot. Dairying, farming and logging were the town’s economic foundations.
From the 1870s to 2000, creeks at the site were ditched and periodically dredged to support cultivation and grazing. Benton Killin died in 1905 and his widow, Harriet Killin, retained ownership of the land. She died in 1937. A dairy operation began in 1941. In that year, the large, gambrel-style barn still present on the site was built.
Gambrel roofs have two flat surfaces on each side of a central ridge; on each side, a shallower pitch above a steeper pitch. Roofs like this allow more headspace than a pitched roof covering the same floor area — hence their wide use in barn construction.. The Kistner family, some or all of whom are descendants of Benton Killin, incorporated their farm interests as Kistner Farm, Inc. in 1963.
Dallas Weber was hired to work the land in 1942. He remained through the end of the dairy operation in 1995, and stayed at the farm as caretaker until his death in 2004. He recalled hand-clearing brush and woody vegetation such as willows north of the ditch. He said he decided to burn off the debris but the fire moved into the exposed peat soils and burned and smoked for weeks. He had to dam the creek to flood the entire area to put the fire out.
Dallas recalled farming corn in a field tiled with 15,000 feet of 4 to 6 inch plastic tile and 1800 feet of 4 inch drain tile.
Visible across the wetlands is the Wilson River Highway, an Oregon state highway. It and the Wolf Creek Highway (now the Sunset Highway) were WPA projects, designed in the depths of the Great Depression to employ 1,500 out-of-work men, while providing the first direct road links to the Oregon Coast. Built through the southern part of the wetlands, it isolated some segments of wetlands from the portion north of the highway.
Most of the agricultural practices at Killin Wetlands ceased in the lower floodplain during the mid-1990s.
Metro acquired 373 acres in 2002 and 212 acres in 2012. Cultivation of the upland fields in clover, wheat and oats and in the floodplain at the 2012 eastern addition continues via agricultural leases. Metro has taken no steps to alter the hydrology of the site (other than to occasionally remove a beaver dam), due to the effects such actions would have on neighboring landowners’ fields. Since farming and management of the site’s drainage ditches and tiles ended in the 1990s, beaver activity and the natural erosion of ditches have changed the hydrology of the site.
Killin Wetlands: The name
When Kistner Farms, Inc. sold 373 acres to Metro in 2002, part of the agreement was to name the new natural area after a Kistner family ancestor, Benton Killin. He was born in 1842 in Iowa and immigrated to Oregon in 1847. As a young boy and man he worked his family’s farm on Butler Creek in Clackamas County. Benton Killin enrolled in 1865 at Pacific University in Forest Grove where he met Harriet Burnett Hoover. She became the first woman to graduate from the university. As a woman, however, she was not allowed to sit on the platform at graduation with the other graduates. Benton and Harriet married in 1873 and he had a successful career as an attorney in Portland. Their home, where he died in 1905, was at 13th and Columbia. They had three children, Benton Killin, Jr., Thomas B. Killin, and Estella (Letitia) Killin. In 1906, one year after Benton Killin died, his daughter Estella married Dr. Frank B. Kistner and they settled in Portland. Her grandson, Frank B. Kistner III, negotiated the sale of his great-grandfather’s farm to Metro in 2002.
He wished to honor Benton Killin, a man of significance to Oregon history because:
1. He was an Oregon Trail pioneer, arriving here as a small child.
2. He was a prominent Portland attorney, specializing in real estate law.
3. He was a regent of Oregon Agricultural College (now OSU) for nine years, approximately from 1895 to 1904 and reputedly instrumental in that school’s early development.
4. He was appointed by President William McKinley in 1897 to travel to Alaska and investigate its agricultural potential.
Timeline
15,000 years ago to early 1800s
Beaver activity over millennia creates large, perennially flooded wetland that developed a deep, high-organic peat soil layer.
Similar wetlands to KW in the Tualatin and Willamette valleys existed, based on presence of Labish soils at Lake Labish (near Salem), Coffee Lake (near Wilsonville), Lousignont Swamp (near Killin Wetland), and Onion Flat (near Sherwood, on Tualatin River NWR). per http://tualatinriverkeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Wapato-Lake_Christy.pdf
This same article estimates such peat deposits accumulate at the rate of 1 inch every 25 years.
Before trapping and agriculture: Ducks and other waterfowl are abundant and the emergent and perennial wetlands provide breeding habitat to northern red-legged frogs as well as other pond-breeding amphibians. The flanking shrub wetlands and bottomland forests provide habitat for many bird species including the willow flycatcher, and the site’s emergent wetlands host several species of shorebirds and wading birds.
Bald eagles have regularly nested at the site. The site provides rearing habitat for cutthroat trout and other juvenile salmonids.
1820s : Beaver trapping by Hudson’s Bay trappers
1840s : Settlement and agriculture begins in what is now Western Washington County.
1843 : Provisional Government of Oregon passes law to allow for 640-acre land claims.
1847 : Benton Killin, born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1842, immigrates to Oregon. Settled on Butler Creek, Clackamas County and as a young boy and man, worked the family farm.
1850: Oregon Donation Land Act legitimizes the 1843 act by the provisional government: 640 acres for a married couple, but 320 acres for a married couple arriving after 1850. Whites and “American half-breed Indians” are eligible. African Americans and Hawaiians are not. Applicants must live on and improve the land for at least four years.
1855 : Donation Land Act expires. By then 30,000 white immigrants had arrived in the Oregon Territory.
1859 : Oregon becomes a state.
1865 : Benton Killin, after attending Willamette University, and serving 3 years in 1st Oregon Cavalry, and recovering from consumption (TB) he enrolls in Pacific University in Forest Grove. It had graduated its first graduate, Harvey Scott, in 1863.
1866
Benton Killin is elected superintendent of schools for Clackamas County.
1867
Benton Killin begins law practice in Oregon City.
1869
Harriet Burnett Hoover (b. 1848 in North Plains) (later Benton Killin’s wife) became first woman to graduate from Pacific University in nearby Forest Grove. Not allowed to sit on platform with male graduates.
1871
Greenville established. It was a crossroads community and the predecessor to Banks. The town site is located two miles south of the present town of Banks. Ray Deeth said it was established by early Hudson’s Bay Company trappers after their employment ended when it left the region.
1870
Benton Killin joins Portland law firm of Logan & Shattuck, which becomes Logan, Shattuck & Killin. He practices real estate law.
1870s
circa. Ditches hand-dug to drain the land for agriculture. They were cleared by drag lining every three years.
1872
Benton Killin purchases land that is now Killin Wetlands, from J.C. Moore and wife. At the time the area was called Greenville. In a later document is a reference on Killin’s land to “Moore’s Lake.” Moores continue to own land adjacent to the Killin land.
1873
The Banks school clerk is J.C. Moore, who sold what is now the Killin Wetlands property to Benton Killin in 1872.
Benton Killin marries Harriet (aka Hattie) Burnett Hoover, daughter of Jacob Hoover and Malinda Cave of Washington County. They have three children, Benton Killin, Jr., Thomas B. Killin and Estella (aka Letitia Estella) Killin Kistner (b. 1878, d. 1961). Her grandson is Frank B. Kistner III who negotiated the sale of the Kistner Farm, Inc. land (now Killin Wetlands) to Metro.
1890–1895
Benton Killin drains Moore’s Lake (the land he acquired from Moore in 1872). (John Christy’s notes; he cites Benton Killin’s correspondence at Pacific University Archives)
1897
Benton Killin named by President Wm McKinley to undertake a journey to Alaska (not yet a named U.S. territory though it was a possession) to assess its agricultural potential.
1903
Rail for Pacific Railway and Navigation laid, Hillsboro to Tillamook; I believe this is the Salmonberry line.
1905
Benton Killin dies. His obituary said he “devoted much attention to his farm in later years.” He had retired due to health issues in 1892.
1907
Banks becomes primary market town in area after it became clear that due to the coming rail line location Greenville would not be a significant site of commerce. Banks named earlier, in 1902 after dairy farmer John Banks.
1906
Sept. 6: Estella Killin marries Frank B. Kistner at her mother’s Portland home. He had graduated medical college of Indiana in 1898. He “has a hospital in Heppner” “His partner was killed along with 200 other people in a cloudburst which destroyed Heppner several years ago. The doctor and his sister were saved by two large poplar trees on which their house was thrust and carried a block down the ravine.”
He was born around 1876. The Kistner-Kalberer House is at 5400 SW Hewett Blvd; on NHR. Wade Pipes, architect. 1930. Kistner invests in real estate and became wealthy.
1910
circa. A mercantile business, one of several in town, was established by W.S. Atlee. His wife _____Atlee had a millinery business above the store. They were grandparents to Beverly Cleary who went on to international fame as a children’s book author. She was born in Yamhill but moved to Portland at about age five and lived in Portland until her college years.
1911
Interurban rail line in Banks; it was the last electrified stop from Portland. Operated by United Railway which also ran freight, and connected to other lines in Banks that ran to Tillamook, Gales Creek and Vernonia
http://www.abandonedrails.com/United_Railways
http://www.srnpdx.org/railroad-still-runs-through-here
1917
Construction starts on Gales Creek and Wilson River Railway “passing about a mile south of Banks and joining the United Railroad at Wilkesboro” per http://fghistory.wikispaces.com/Banks,+Oregon
The line was abandoned and the tracks pulled up in 1951.
http://www.brian894x4.com/GalesCreekandWilsonRiverRR.html
This link is a map that shows the rail grade relative to Killin Wetlands, showing it run above the south end of the wetlands that are now on the south side of the Wilson River Highway: http://www.brian894x4.com/images/GCandWRmap1.GIF
1918
Harriet B. Killin (Benton Killin’s widow) sues Wilson River and Gales Creek Railway for causing a fire in the peat soils on her land.
1922
Himalayan blackberry, a non-native is first noted. It likes disturbed soil.
1924
United Railway builds line from Banks to Vernonia.
1920s
Bullfrogs (a non-native species seen at KW) introduced to Oregon, as potential agricultural product. Demand did not materialize; frogs are released into wild.
1930s
Reed canarygrass introduced as cattle fodder, primarily in pasture north of Cedar Canyon Road. Also used for stabilizing drainage ditches, per Dallas Weber’s conversation with Curt Zonick.
Nutria introduced to Oregon for farming. When the market for fur changed in the 1940s, thousands were released into the wild.
Construction begins on Wilson River Highway — viewable across wetlands. It and the Wolf Creek Highway (now the Sunset Highway) were WPA projects designed to employ 1,500 out-of-work men while providing direct links to the coast.
Per 1996 Biological Assessment: the highway passed through the wetlands, thereby isolating 15 acres on its south side. ODOT owns this portion
1933
Train service (passenger) discontinued into Portland on the United Railways line.
1930s to ?
Farmed corn in west part of swamp over a field tiled with 1800 ft of 4” tile and 15,000 ft of 4–6” plastic tile.
1937
Harriet Hoover Killin, Benton Killin’s wife, dies in her Portland home 32 years after her husband. She is buried in Lone Fir Cemetery.
1941
Dairying operation begins; large barn is built.
1942
Dallas Weber begins working at farm. Brush and woody vegetation was hand-cleared north of the ditch and west in the 1930s or 1940s (willows and brush in wetlands when Dallas got here ). Dallas said he burned it once and the fire burned and smoked for weeks when the peat caught until he dammed up the creek and flooded the whole swamp. Dallas believes the dead willows caused by ditch silting and keeping the land flooded.
1944
First known aerial photos show “southern barn, small barn, large barn” among other buildings.
1950s
Poultry shed built.
1954
Letitia Kistner (Benton Killin’s daughter) sells a portion of the land to the State of Oregon, presumably for highway right of way.
1963
Farm business incorporated as Kistner Farm, Inc. and an operating agreement signed between Kistner Farm Inc. and Mrs. W.C. Weber and Dallas Weber. Farm then was 516 acres.
1991
September: Preserve Design Plan for Banks Swamp, by John Christy for the Nature Conservancy. Describes the larger site area from an ecological perspective, offering descriptions of the wetland’s condition, management recommendations and a short list of threats to the site. The report is located in hard-copy files at Metro and at: M:\suscntr\Natural Areas andParks\Regional Properties\Killin Wetlands TA\Planning\Killin SCMP 2012\Historicaldocuments\TNC Preserve Plan for Banks Swamp.pdf
from the plan: “Banks Swamp is all that remains of an estimated 10,000 acres of willow swamp and marsh that occurred on poorly drained Labish, Semiahmoo and Wapato soils in the Willamette Valley.”
Similar soils found at Lake Labish, Wapato Lake and Onion Flats in Washington County. All but Banks Swamp had been drained for onion farming by 1914.
By the time of his 1991 report, beaver activity had already impacted the land, returning it to the wetland it has once been: “A single ditch extends the entire length of the wetland but is dammed in several places by beaver. The resulting overland flow saturates most of the site year-round.”
1995
Dairying ends. Curt Zonick notes Dallas Weber had told him he stopped farming due to changing DEQ requirements about keeping cattle away from waterways. A 2006 Tribune article (see link at 2006 entry below) notes that it was then that maintenance ceased on drainage ditches and tiling.
1995
First Natural Areas bond measure approved by voters. Metro works to acquire lands in 21 target areas.
1996
Biological Assessment, McKay and Dairy Creek Drainages, METRO Regional Parks and Greenspaces, June 1996 by Fishman Environmental Services notes “Banks Swamp” has significant habitat values.
1997
A count of 200 Greater Yellowlegs, a shorebird, at Killin Wetlands on 30 Mar 1997 is one of Oregon’s top counts. (Portland Audubon website).
1998
In negotiations with Metro to purchase Kistner Farm/Banks Swamp, Frank B. Kistner III is insistent the land be named for his ancestor Benton Killin. Metro staff is not amenable at first, citing naming rights only in the event of a land donation.
Phase 1 Environmental Assessment performed of first acquisition, variously known as Weber Dairy Farm and Kistner Farm.
2002
Metro purchases 373 acres: 217 acres of wetlands; the rest farm and forested uplands. Purchased from Kistner Farm, $1.45 million. Terms of agreement: Killin Wetlands to be the name after the owner’s pioneer ancestor Benton Killin. Wedgewood Duck Club hunting lease is maintained (how long?)
Agreement allows for longtime manager Dallas Weber to continue to rent the home.
The land is purchased in part for its rare habitat and wildlife.
From Portland Audubon: “Killin represents the last two percent of Willamette Valley scrub-shrub marsh habitat on organic peat soils. The 98% decline in this habitat that has occurred since the 1850’s is concurrent with Neotropical migratory bird declines. The Killin Wetlands parcel contains one of the largest intact contiguous stands of the uncommon Geyer’s willow (Salix geyeriana) in the valley, as well as other native wetland vegetation which provides important habitat for breeding migratory birds. Metro is working on site to remove exotic Reed canarygrass, reintroduce native plants, and support concurrent avian monitoring to quantify the effects willow, cattail, sedge, and rush restoration.”
Per file notes preceding the agreement, Frank B. Kistner III noted that he’d had trouble with DEQ “years ago” for cow manure in the creek.
2002
The area, commonly known as Banks Swamp, was renamed Killin Wetlands. In June of 2002 the Oregon Geographic Names Board approved the name change.
Agricultural lease between Metro and Bernards.
2004?
Wetlands east of Killin Road and south of Cedar Canyon Road were mowed, sprayed, disked and reseeded with native grasses to prepare for native shrub and riparian forest revegetation; but flooding hinders efforts and makes it hard to eliminate reed canarygrass (per SCP).
2006
Voters approved second bond measure to acquire and protect natural areas in the region.
Tribune article in which Tim Dierickx, who was (and still is as of 2015) farming the land now part of KW, complained that Metro’s practices had changed the hydrology, making his fields too wet. He farmed Cedar Ridge Farms, 120 acres then owned by Bruce and Sheila Harris. (I think this is also known as the Moore Farm.)
http://pamplinmedia.com/component/content/article?id=104392
2008
Killin Wetlands named an IBA (Important Bird Area), an international designation for a site with outstanding habitat value — chosen for its role in hosting birds for breeding, migrating or over-wintering. IBAs form a global network of critical habitat: thousands have been designated across Europe, Asia and North America. In 2015 there are more than 2,500 state-level IBAs in the U.S. and nearly 450 globally-significant IBAs in the U.S. Audubon Society of Portland oversees the 97 IBAs in Oregon. It’s one of 12 in the Portland metro region.
2012
Metro purchases 215 acres, the Moore Farm. That expanded holdings to current amount. The new addition includes nearly a mile along the west fork of Dairy Creek, and its confluence with Cedar Canyon Creek. $500K from a North American Wetlands Conservation Act grant managed by Ducks Unlimited contributed to the $650K purchase.
Botanical inventory of Moore property and observations on adjacent Killin Wetland, a 2012 report from John Christy of the Oregon Biodiversity Information Center on the eastern expansion to the site acquired in 2011, and observation on the larger wetlands. The report is located at:
M:\suscntr\Natural Areas and Parks\Regional Properties\Killin Wetlands TA\Planning\Killin
SCMP 2012\Historical documents\Christy 2012 Report.pdf
2013
Voters said yes to Parks and Natural Areas levy, source of funds for enhancements planned in 2015.
2014
May: Site Conservation Plan for Killin Wetlands Natural Area
Re ongoing threats and proposed strategies/actions to address them:
The Killin Wetlands are primarily threatened by factors that typically degrade wetlands, including habitat loss due to artificial dewatering, encroachment by invasive, non-native species (plant and animal), and degraded water quality. The fact that the majority of the wetland is now under protective management reduces these threats, to some extent. The site is bordered to the south by a rural highway, which will pose a threat to the wetlands in the form of contaminated runoff. Given the highway’s narrow road prism, and steep banks, little can be done to abate this threat. Over the long term, agriculture poses a threat to the wetlands in the form of chemical and sediment being transported from the flanking uplands into the wetlands.
Natural resources strategies to undertake:
· suppress exotic plants, esp. reed canarygrass
· identify and implement a more natural hydrologic scheme in the wetlands
· collect and preserve genetic diversity of Geyer willow which exists no where else in Willamette Valley
· acquire more property to address habitat fragmentation
See SCP for more on restoration/conservation strategies and steps, p. 9.
2015
Clover, wheat and oats continue to be grown (ESA, p. 11) on year-to-year leases. Tenants must abide by the same Integrated Pest Management Plan that Metro follows.
83 acres of Kistner Farms continue to be leased to John Bernards who farms wheat and other crops mostly in upland areas north side of Cedar Canyon Rd. year to year lease.
95 acres of the former Moore Farm continue to be leased to Tim Dierickx on a year-to-year lease with Metro. Haylage (round bale silage), spring wheat, clover are crops. Neither Dierickx or Bernards is certified organic or follows green farming practices.
Community open houses: Feb. 18, May 7, May 19
Killin Wetlands has one of the highest densities of American Bittern in the state, visible from late January thru mid-May before vegetation grows taller. Numerous species of shorebirds exceeding 100 individuals are frequent here in spring and fall. (Portland Audubon website and http://netapp.audubon.org/IBA/Reports/2493)
Barn to potentially be part of the Washington County Quilt Barn Trail , a project of Westside Quilters Guild.
2016–17
Construction at Killin Wetlands
Notes
Not cited, but would be good to find: Banks, A Darn Good Little Town by Ann Fulton. It appeared as a self-published dissertation in 1995
Ralph Friedman in In Search of Western Oregon (Caxton Printers, 1990) wrote of Banks’ small size: “If you can get lost in Banks you should not be let out of the house.”
“Early Electric Interurbans in Oregon.” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol 44, No 4 (Dec 1943): 399.
Killin Road bears the name of the Killin family; a 2002 county survey in Metro’s files says the county has no records of when the road was created. First recorded use of name as a boundary marker was 1974.
Ray Deeth told me that Cedar Canyon Road had once been planked, which was not uncommon for farm to market roads in the 1800s.
Numerous Killins are interred in Banks. I have not determined their connection to Benton Killin. Here are some, but not all of the names.
a. Andrew J. 1847–1921
b. Eva Lyda 1886–1915
c. ____, daughter of J. and P. Killin 1868 to 1888
d. Charles A. Killin 1873 to 1947
e. Andrew Wade Killin, son of Douglas and Emily Killin, 1986–1988
f. Emily Pearl Killin. b 941
g. Douglas Ray Killin, 1940–2008
h. other Killin names from cemetery registry at Union Point Cemetery:
i. Raymond
ii. Andrew
iii. Anna
iv. Charles
v. Charlone
vi. George
vii. Joel
viii. Marie Nancy
ix. Mary
x. Norma
xi. Odessa
xii. Pelena
xiii. Viola
