Residents of a small Oregon town are trying to stop an 1870s farm from being replaced by a water treatment plant.

As a volunteer with the Banks Historical Society, Jennifer Allen Newton keeps tabs on events in her small Oregon town, which has a population of 1,865 at last count and a long, storied history.

But Newton and other residents were surprised to learn last year that the 1870s Wilkes House, one of the surviving Oregon Trail homes in Washington County, could be replaced by a city water treatment plant for the proposed 30-acre Sunset View residential and commercial development at West Banks in the annexed west end of the city.

For months, Newton and other members of a newly formed group, Friends of the Wilkes House, talked with landowners Lone Oak Land and Investment Company and Wolverine Financial, who signed a contract to sell most of the land to residential developer David Weekley Homes and turn over ownership of Wilkes House to the city.

The owners have proposed moving the monument to save it. Newton said the water treatment plant should be built on another site to preserve the historic house and the city’s largest continuous canopy of heritage trees.

“Moving the house would make it extremely difficult to get historic designation and protection” and reduce grant opportunities for restoration work, Newton said. She then expressed a larger concern. “It appears that things are being done to the house that may be in preparation for its demolition. I don’t know, but it’s alarming.”

On Tuesday, July 9, the Banks City Council will discuss the privately owned Wilkes House at a work session that the public can watch in person or online, City Manager Jolynn Becker told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

“The city does not own the property or the Wilkes House and will not own the property until the Westside developer meets certain conditions in its development agreement and transfers ownership to the city,” Mayor Stephanie Jones said. “Our understanding is that the landowner offered to donate the structure to the local historical society for free on the condition that they move the building to another location. To our knowledge, that has not happened.”

In June, the Friends of the Wilkes House, a local nonprofit, announced the Save the Wilkes House campaign on GoFundMe, hoping to raise money to preserve the historic site as a city park, cultural community center and museum.

“We don’t have the financial resources of the city, landowners or developers, so we’re hoping to forge alliances that will allow us to save this heritage home and trees from demolition and find another suitable location for the water treatment plant,” Newton said.

The preservation group is not opposed to the development project on the city’s west side, with the exception of Wilkes’ one-acre property, she added.

Newton and others say preserving and restoring the historic landmark would attract visitors and generate business. The property is near the Banks-Vernonia State Trail, the new Salmonberry Trail and Washington County’s future Council Creek Regional Trail.

The Lower Columbia Archaeological and Research Services, based in Portland, has identified a prehistoric archaeological site and artifacts in the area. It takes time to investigate the archaeological significance of the land along Dairy Creek that was used by the Atfalati band of Kalapuya people as a summer camp, Newton said. The Atfalati, or Tualatin, were forced to relocate to the Grand Ronde Reservation near McMinnville in 1856.

In 1845, the Wilkes family marched west on the Oregon Trail. Peyton and Anna Wilkes are considered the first permanent European-American settlers in the Banks area, according to Newton, who wrote the history book “Banks: A Town on the Move.”

“The Wilkes family lived in harmony alongside the Atfalati people,” Newton said, drawing on oral histories and Native American artifacts discovered during the archaeological survey.

Peyton and Anna’s son, Jabez Wilkes, lived in the family’s log cabin until the early 1870s, when he built the still-standing gable-roofed house.

The first funds raised by the Save the Wilkes House campaign will go toward a tree inventory and to reimburse the Banks Historical Society for the $900 it will cost to inspect the nearly 155-year-old home to ensure its structural soundness. The remaining funds will go directly toward securing the home, applying for grants and starting renovation projects, Newton said.

As of Wednesday, $2,025 of the $20,000 goal has been raised.

— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

[email protected] | @janeteastman