Cantrall-Buckley Park

From pioneer days a rock-rimmed pool on the Applegate River has served as a swimming hole, and Cantrall-Buckley Park grew up around it. A bridge crosses the river just above the pool. Downstream and up, the park covers 88 acres with 1.75 miles of river frontage, its lawns shaded by large native trees, at an elevation of 1,500 feet. The way in runs west from Jacksonville on Highway 238, left on Hamilton Road, and right on Cantrall Road. Jackson County puts the distance at 8 miles. A Greater Applegate, the nonprofit that long ran the park, says seven.

The pool, the lawns, and the camp

Each summer Rogue Riverkeeper volunteers sample the river here weekly from July 17 to September 5. They test for E. coli against Oregon’s standard for water contact, 406 MPN per 100 mL. The Swim Guide listing, updated with a sample taken September 7, 2026, records that the site has passed at least 95 percent of the time. The group’s 2025 report card named the Applegate at Cantrall-Buckley and Fish Hatchery Parks among the standout swimming locations in the Rogue basin.

Back from the water are five group picnic areas, lettered A through D, plus the South Lawn. Area A has tables, barbecues, electricity, and the park’s only covered shelter. All the areas have water. A playground stands near Picnic Area D. The campground has 30 basic sites without hookups and one group camp, and the Swim Guide lists restrooms with showers.

A turtle, a sundial, and a mock orange

The playground was rebuilt by subscription. In 2015 Tom Carstens, chairman of the Cantrall-Buckley Park Committee, began raising money to replace a 40-year-old playground. Donation boxes went out to the Ruch Country Store, Ruch Hardware, and the Applegate Store & Cafe. By May 2016 the work was finished. Carstens reported it as the largest of Jackson County’s playgrounds, paid for entirely by local citizens, businesses, and private foundations. Jackson County Parks donated the labor to erect the Playcraft structures, which were designed by local kids and their mothers. Jeremy Criswell, a Jacksonville mosaic artist, made “Tuffy Turtle,” a three-dimensional mosaic turtle for the playground. A mural in the children’s play area has since been completed.

Nearby, a solar array of 23.4 kilowatts doubles as a shade structure. It was paid for with an $89,530 grant from Pacific Power’s Blue Sky program, and it sends its surplus electricity back to the county grid. A kiosk explains it. Of that display, Steve Lambert, program manager for Jackson County Parks, said: “My thanks to AGA for all the assistance in the creation and installation of the educational display kiosk.” At the sundial, a visitor becomes the gnomon, casting a shadow onto numbered tiles set in the ground. A pedestal and sign explain how to read the time. Three of the park’s newer benches were made by students in the Grants Pass High School metal fabrication class.

Along the river stand metal sculptures by Cheryl D. Garcia of Jacksonville. Eleven were planned, and the Jacksonville Review reported in 2018 that together they would make Southern Oregon’s first sculpture park. A fundraiser at Valley View Winery that April 15 raised $23,000 toward the art walk. The first piece, “The Mock Orange,” went up in the fall of 2018. It is a 12-foot white blossom of the native shrub, which is named for its faint orange-blossom scent. The plans also called for larger-than-life birds, a twelve-foot Shooting Star, and a Wild Oregon Iris. Each piece stands beside a sign and pedestal describing the species it depicts. A Greater Applegate reports eight more installed after the first, with the final two to be completed in 2021.

Dragonfly Place

A monument at the park, Dragonfly Place, is being developed in honor of Taowhywee, Agnes Baker Pilgrim. “Grandma Aggie” was an elder of the Takelma Rogue River Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, a founding member of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, and an advocate for clean water and Native American rights. In the 1980s she presided over the return of the Salmon Ceremony to the Applegate River below the Applegate Lake dam. The site at the park has an engraved stone tribute and a gathering area. Native plants are planned for the next phase, and a later installation is to carry panels of tribal-verified history, traditions, stories, and art. Janis Mohr-Tipton, chair of the Cantrall Buckley Enhancement Committee, has said: “When I came to the Applegate and learned the real history of the major cultural conflicts, I felt I had to do something. We all have a responsibility to strive for healing.”

Mohr-Tipton also writes in the Applegater that the park is in a period of transition. Staff and volunteers are managing dying conifers and deciduous trees, keeping up the trails, and watering new plantings through the dry months. The county once closed Picnic Area D for two July days for hazard tree work. In spring the Applegate Outdoor School holds classes here.

Cantrall’s claim and the Buckley ranch

The park takes its name from two pioneer families. John Cantrall came to Southern Oregon in the late 1850s and mined Sterling Creek during the boom years. In 1865 the family left Sterling Creek and took up an 80-acre land claim across the Applegate River from Uniontown. Cantrall mined and farmed there for the next 25 years and bought adjoining land. After his death his widow, Sarah, moved to Jacksonville, where in 1899 she bought a one-story frame house at 635 South 3rd Street.

On Hamilton Road stands the house of James and “Maggie” (Riley) Buckley. It was built in the 1880s after their first house there was destroyed by fire, and an antique wood-framed water tower stands beside it. The couple had seven children, but few descendants stayed on the land, and the family donated land for the park. Evelyn Byrne Williams, writing in the Applegater in 2010, recorded that an 1880s photograph of baseball players and picnickers taken near the house served as a clothing guide for a 1973 Universal Studios film she called “The Great Minnesota Raid.” A baseball game and picnic for that film were shot on the ranch.

The park itself came with a road. In 1960 the Bureau of Land Management built its bridge across the river just above the swimming hole to reach its forest tracts. The bridge made it possible for the Jackson County Parks Department to buy 45 acres and develop a park, named, according to Historic Jacksonville, Inc., in honor of the Cantralls and their neighbors. It was inaugurated in 1968.

A closure notice in 1998

In 1998 Jackson County Parks was struggling and decided to close the park. The Greater Applegate Community Development Corporation, later renamed A Greater Applegate, took over its operation. “The people were very concerned about that and some community leaders stepped up and said, ‘We’ll run it,’” Seth Kaplan, the group’s board chairman, told KOBI-TV in 2018. “So it’s always been a county park but the community agreed to run it.” Kaplan called it “the jewel of the Applegate Valley,” one of the few places along the river with public access.

In 2015 Carstens wrote that the park, then charging $4 a car, had drawn more than 7,000 family visits and 1,250 family campground nights the summer before. He noted that many of those families were migrant workers on local farms and orchards. In February 2018 the county took back day-to-day management. “Managing a park through volunteers is difficult and they got to a point where they just needed help,” said John Vial, director of Jackson County Roads and Parks. “We approached them and said, ‘What if we take the park back. Our parks program is in much better shape now.’ And they said, ‘Great.’”

The park’s fiftieth year was marked with a Golden Jubilee on July 14, 2018. Organizers announced more than 50 exhibitors and vendors, Applegate Valley Lions Club tri-tip, Las Palmas Mexican food, Conner Fields Brewing, Jack Frost Shaved Ice, and face painting and birdhouse building for children. The music began with Romancing the West at 11 am, and The Brothers Reed, a folk-rocking duo from southern Oregon, were billed to close the day from 5 to 7 pm.