Carson Homestead 1910-1945
According to historian Jan Meranda, the Glender family owned the Carson land from 1910 to 1941 when it became part of Camp Adair. The story of the Glender family farm was collected as a part of the Soap Creek Valley history initiative as told by Eugene Glender, the son of the family, in 1994. According to the book’s intro, “Gene's story covers the period of 1910 by which time his parents had helped to establish the Glender Brothers farm until 1941 when many local families (including the Glenders) were moved to make room for the WW II training facilities at Camp Adair” (Glender, 4).
Jan Meranda states, “in the early 1900s two young Illinois men of German parentage, William and Charles Glender, began talking about moving West to Oregon. Sometime before 1910, they had arrived in the Soap Creek Valley, purchased 400 acres and an old farmhouse at the corner of Tampico and Soap Creek roads, and started farming as a partnership. Will married a young neighbor woman, Laura Metge, and in 1916 Charlie married her younger sister, Selma…This monograph represents Gene's recollections of farm life in the Tampico area during the years prior to World War II. The establishment of Camp Adair during the early stages of the war caused the U.S. Army to force local farmers to sell up and move out. The united Glender families moved to Albany in 1942 and were never allowed to return to their Tampico home. After Camp Adair was dismantled, Oregon State University acquired the Glender property. The house was moved in 1992, not long after Bob and I first began our search for the "lost" town of Tampico.”
Although the Camp Adair era of the land was brief, it shaped the surrounding farmlands into an army cantonment--temporary quarters for troops--called Camp Adair. The camp was located in the mid-Willamette Valley 6 miles north of Corvallis, Oregon. For two years, from 1942 - 1944, over 100,000 soldiers trained for WWII combat at Camp Adair. The camp impacted the lives and land of the people of Benton County, as well as the regional economy as all of the farms previously on Tampico land had been sold to make room for the camp. At the time of its existence, it was the second largest city in Oregon, only Portland was larger. There were 1,700 buildings constructed in Camp Adair in the few years it was up and running. In 1946, the site was decommissioned. According to OSU, "Between 1957 and 1969, the former camp headquarters building housed an Air Force radar station. In 1976, the community was incorporated, and "the Air Force facilities, along with a few surviving wartime structures, became the nucleus of Adair Village." As of the 2010 census, the population was 840."
Citation: Glender, Eugene, Bob Zybach, Jan Meranda, and OSU Research Forests. 1994. Eugene Glender: Growing Up On a Tampico Family Farm, Benton County, Oregon: 1910-1941. : [Corvallis, Or.]: OSU Research Forests, College of Forestry.
Tampico, Soap Creek Valley Map
1926 Depiction of Tampico
1941 Airlie Site Aerial View of Soap Creek Valley
