Kinton, Oregon
Name: Kinton
Class: C2
GPS: 45.423365, -122.877821
Directions: In Portland, take the Scholls Ferry exit off of I-217. Head west for 5.3 miles. The Kinton School house will be on the right.
Description:
Lewis L. McArthur says in Oregon Geographic Names “Kinton is a place on the Scholls Ferry Road south of Cooper Mountain. It was named for Peter Kindt, who took up a donation land claim nearby in pioneer days. For information about Kindt and Kinton, see the Hillsboro Argu, Jan. 21, 1932.” Unfortunately this issue of the Argus is missing from the Hillsboro Library system, and the online newspaper archival sites end two decades before.
Oregon Post Offices 1847-1985 states that a post office was established May 14, 1894 and closed August 31, 1903, and that it was named in honor of Peter Kindt.
Mr. Kindt seem to have been well thought of. His obituary in the Hillsboro Argus is longer then most, detailing his life and marriage to Phebe Davies, and their trip across the Oregon Trail via covered wagon. The couple arrived in Oregon on August 28, 1853 after “only” a four month trip across the United States. They took up a 320 acre land claim and both lived there until their respective deaths. Peter Kindt died unexpectedly from pneumonia on March 29, 1897 and his wife died June 28th, 1911. During that time the newspaper is filled with news of Mr. Kindt’s service as a juror, but over all he seemed to have lived a fairly quite life as a farmer.
Other then that, the Hillsboro Argus Archives are filled with normal news stories for a small town. Reports of deaths (all natural causes,) a few civic items such as the crowing of the Queen for a harvest festival, and news of comings and goings of residents.
Today, Kinton is bypassed by traffic, but remains a small tight-knit community. A community hall near the old school house supports the communities civic needs. Several farmers have small farm stands to sell the fruits of their labors. And more recently, Scholls Ferry Road is being widened, at least in the vicinity of the school house.
More Information:
Please comment below if you know anything more about Kinton Oregon
So I ran across this photo set from flickr that also says it’s the Farmington Schoolhouse–but its obviously not the one in your picture.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/desanno/sets/72157622662959735/detail/
I can’t tell from the set where exactly it is located. What are the GPS coords for yours?
I wonder what their original names were…
This building is actually on the same road about four miles west of the the school house. In person it looks much more like a Church to me then a school house. There was also a town called Farmington Mall which was about 4-5 miles east of Farmington so it’s possible that my picture is that school.
I’m planning on heading down to the Historical Society and seeing if I can clear this mystery up as it’s been bugging me for a while now.
Thanks for the update!
The other one is on Rood Bridge Rd.
Cheers
It was a school built in 1908. See http://www.kintongrange.org/schoolhouse.html
I picked up a copy of Scholls Ferry Tales at an event at the Kinton Grange. It’s a good source of info about the area.
There used to be a donation supported historical museum nearby called Tile Flat Treasures. One memory I have from there is perusing an old schoolbook from the era that included Bible stories.
When I bought an old farmhouse here, I discovered a one-of-a-kind well-preserved precision tool set under an outbuilding, too important of a find to hoard, so donated it to the museum.
Also, buried in a growing blackberry bramble was a motorcycle graveyard. A neighbor, Bill Becker, informed me that a previous owner was a competition dirt bike rider who could often be seen flying above the tree line, and who had been known to work on his bike in our living room. Bill taught an antique car restoration class at PCC and could be heard putting around the otherwise quiet country road in his early model topless Hupmobile when Tile Flat Road was lined with old oak trees and still had caution signs warning of horse traffic.
It has been an idyllic life here, surrounded by sheep, dairy cows, buffalo, coyotes, and equestrian jumpers and their colts, The roads are getting wider and the dark night sky has been slowly replaced with a series of blinking traffic lights, stadium lights at the new High School (which I suggested should capture the historic “Kinton High” instead of the creatively imagined “Mountainside”), and streetlights of the growing bedroom community.