Tigard, Oregon, began as an elegant farming community on the Tualatin Plains in the Northern Willamette Valley and became an upscale metropolitan residential community. The Native American Atfalati Kalapuyas interacted with early trappers, traders, missionaries,
and pioneer settlers. Pioneers arrived in the 1850s to take up donation land claims. Tigard was originally called East Butte, and numerous nationalities and religions populated the settlement. A grange was formed to aid farmers’ causes, and churches were established to build a sense of neighborliness. East Butte became Tigardville when Charles Fremont Tigard opened a post office in his general merchandise store in 1886 and named the postal station after his parents. Tigardville became Tigard when the Oregon Electric Railway came through in 1908, and residents distinguished Tigard from Wilsonville. The Oregon Electric shipped Tigard’s farm produce north to Portland and south to Salem. Tigard was incorporated as a city on September 11, 1961, and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011.