History in the News
Farming in Cedar Mill—The Choban family
by Virginia Bruce
 Around the turn of the 20th century, a pair of brothers lived in a part of northern Greece known as Macedonia, near Thessaloniki. That area was occupied by the Turks, who were drafting men and boys to serve in their army. The Tsobanoglou brothers, Frank and Jim, didn’t want to fight for Turkey, and so Frank left for America at around age 8. After arriving on Ellis Island in New York, he managed to find employment along with other immigrants building the railroads. After working his way across the US, he found his home in Oregon. He worked as a baker in Portland for a while, and was finally able to bring his older brother Jim over to join him. By that time, they had changed their name to Choban.
The Choban brothers first started farming in the Bonny Slope/West Portland area but by 1921 they had bought a 37-acre farm on Barnes Road in Cedar Mill. The farm stretched from near the present-day Santorini Restaurant to the former Teufel property on the northwest, to the old alignment of Barnes Road to the southwest, and included the various medical buildings on Barnes. Part of the land was rich beaverdam “bottomland” and was ideally suited for “truck farming”—growing vegetables for market. The brothers started off specializing in celery, but also grew green beans and lettuce.
When Jim decided it was time for him to marry, he returned to Thessaloniki to find a wife. Through family connections, he was introduced to Marika and quickly married her and brought her back to the farm. Frank remained a bachelor.
In 1929, Jim and Marika had a son they named George. He grew up on the family farm, attending Cedar Mill Elementary and Beaverton High School. He and his brother Paul helped the family on the farm, using horses to power the farm equipment. Stan Russell, who lived in the JQA Young house on Cornell, provided manure for their fields.
At first they kept the bottomland (now the Cedar Mill Wetland) drained with a pump driven by a Model T engine, later replaced by a Star Briscoe engine that pumped 300 gallons a minute. Finally they put in an electric motor in the late 40’s.
George remembers that it was a constant battle to keep the beavers from damming up the creek. He would go out and pull the branches apart, and the next day the beavers would have put them back. When they sold the “bottomland” to TriMet for the wetland development, George stipulated that the water must continue to flow to prevent mosquito infestation. This is accomplished with a series of drains and weirs.
The land was well-suited to growing celery because of the “crick”—the tributary of Beaverton’s Johnson Creek that meanders through the land. Celery is a labor-intensive crop, but it can be planted densely—at one point they had 200,000 celery plants on 13 acres. It also shipped well, and the family sent its produce off to the east on the railroad.
By 1948, cheaper celery from California drove them out of that business, so they contracted with Birdseye in Hillsboro to grow green beans. They employed kids from the area to pick beans in the summer. They also grew lettuce for the Portland market. When Jim Choban died in 1965, commercial farming on the property ceased.
Marika’s sister and brother-in-law moved into the family farmhouse about that time and before long they opened the family restaurant, Marika’s, serving Greek and American food from 1970-1989. The family still owns the land and leases the restaurant building to the current restaurant.
George attended Willamette University from 1947-1951. He recalls that a years’ tuition when he began was $175. He majored in mathematics and has been teaching math in various schools ever since—currently he teaches at PCC Rock Creek. He joined the Army in 1952, serving in Europe and teaching basic education to GIs. In 1950 George started collecting vintage cars, particularly Packards which had a style of hood that he liked.
In 1960, he drove his father to San Francisco on business, and while there he met Anastasia. She was born in Greece, and had learned English at the American College. She had worked for the UN for a while, helping villagers be more productive and then taking Greek immigrants to Australia, and then working as a consultant to agriculture and fishing industries there. She eventually joined her sister, who was living in Salem at the time, in 1956. She had wanted to work at Meier and Frank, but the family told her she should go to college. She graduated from Willamette as a medical technologist and found a job in San Francisco.
She and George hit it off pretty quickly. He “got tired of the courting,” and they were married just 13 days after they met. They returned to the farm, and Anastasia began working for Oregon Health Sciences University, and then at the Primate Center. She continued to work as they raised their three girls, and also helped out with the restaurant, buying produce and supervising.
In the late 60s they bought a 22-acre farm in the Rock Creek area from the Boy family. They started out in the old farmhouse, but built their present home in the early 70s. George still has a large garden growing—you guessed it—celery, along with lettuce, beans, peas and other vegetables, which they sell at the Beaverton Farmers’ Market. Two of their daughters live nearby on the property, and the other one lives in Salem.
The Chobans continued their involvement in the Cedar Mill community, regularly attending CPO 1 meetings until a couple of years ago, and driving one of George’s classic restored autos as part of the opening celebration for the Cornell road work a few years ago. And they’re obviously still as much in love with each other as they were when they first met!
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