Jacksonville

Gold on Jackson Creek

Jacksonville stands on Jackson Creek, a small tributary of the Rogue River in southern Oregon, several miles west of Medford.^2,3 The building survey’s record dates the strike to December 1851, when two prospectors from California found gold on the creek, and says James Cluggage and James Poole began working placers in January 1852.² The 1940 Federal Writers’ Project guide put the discovery in January 1852 and named the second man J. R. Poole, and the Oregon History Project places the find in Rich Gulch.^4,5 Word spread when the Oregon men went down to Yreka, California, for provisions, and by one account Californians trailed a drunken new arrival back to his camp, after which a thousand miners from California had overrun the country in a short time.² By the summer of 1852 the camp was a tent city of 500.¹ That November the Swiss-born Peter Britt walked in nearly penniless, hauling his photographic apparatus in a small cart, came to mine for gold, and found photography more profitable.^3,7 The Oregon History Project says the Territorial Legislature set apart Jackson County on January 12, 1852, and named the camp its seat, while the National Register nomination has Jacksonville becoming county seat in 1853.^1,5

Gold Dust and the Fire of 1873

The 1940 guide wrote of a place where men washed as much as a pint cup of gold in a day.⁴ The town became a supply point for mining throughout the region, with churches, schools, boarding houses, and saloons.^3,8 Legend, as the 1940 guide told it, has the Methodist church built in 1854 with one night’s take at the gaming tables.⁴ Beginning in 1860, C.C. Beekman, agent for Wells Fargo & Company, carried gold over the stage route to Sacramento and Portland, and the 1940 guide says his bank sent express shipments of gold to Crescent City.^4,5 The Chinese were the largest single ethnic group in the region and in the 1860 census made up at least 50 percent of the men identified as miners; on September 1, 1866, the editor of Jacksonville’s Oregon Sentinel wrote that “these people” added nothing to the permanent wealth of this country.⁸ In 1873 a fire destroyed much of the business section, the Union Hotel among it, and the town was rebuilt at once; the brick U.S. Hotel opened in 1880 with a visit by President Rutherford B. Hayes.^1,9

The Railroad Goes to Medford

As gold mining declined in the 1870s, residents put money into new homes and businesses and watched a new courthouse go up while they waited for the Oregon and California Railroad.⁵ The line reached the Rogue Valley in 1883, and Jacksonville officials, sure the railroad could not survive without their town, declined to buy a right-of-way.⁵ The National Register nomination says the railroad by-passed the town four miles to the east in 1884, while the Oregon History Project says the track was laid five miles to the west, where Medford grew up.^1,5 In 1891 the five-mile Rogue River Valley Railway was built to the main line at Medford to revive the town’s trade.¹⁰ William Barnum ran it much of the time as a family business, and in 1893 a railroad magazine featured his 13-year-old son John as the nation’s youngest conductor.⁶ Trolley service began on the electrified line in 1916, passenger service ended in 1920, and the line closed in 1925.^6,11 The county seat moved to Medford in 1927, and the Great Depression followed in 1929.⁶ In 1940 the Federal Writers’ Project guide counted 806 people and found bearded men drowsing on benches outside dusty shops with empty whiskey bottles in the windows, and small back-yard mines where family gardens had been.⁴

Saving the Old Town

The Southern Oregon Historical Society was founded in 1946 to save the 1875 Jacksonville Courthouse from demolition, though another account dates the new courthouse to 1884.^3,12 Desperately poor and ramshackle after World War II, Jacksonville began to flourish after the 1960s, when citizens pushed to have it listed as a National Historic Landmark.¹³ In 1966 it became one of the first historic districts named under the National Historic Preservation Act, and Southern Oregon Historical Society staff helped make it a National Historic Landmark.^3,12 The City Hall, built in 1880-81 for $2500.00 with two jail cells and room for fire equipment, has been in use as a city meeting hall since 1881.¹⁴ The sources disagree on the Beekman Bank’s date: the National Register nomination gives 1856, the 1940 guide gives 1862, and a photograph caption gives 1863.^1,3,4 The railway depot, now the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, is the line’s one remaining building.¹⁰ The sequoia that Peter Britt planted in 1862 when his son Emil was born still dominates the landscape.⁷