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Did you know that Jacksonville had a museum as early as the 1870s? Ot that it was housed in a saloon—the Table Rock Billiard Saloon? Originally a bakery, it morphed into a saloon after the demise of its neighbor, the notorious El Dorado Saloon, in the fire of 1874. The Table Rock brick building survived. Cabinet of Curiosities It’s not known when Table Rock co-owner and saloonkeeper Herman von Helms began collecting fossils and oddities but soon after the Table Rock reopene

Did you know that Jacksonville used to have a baseball team? The city block on North 5th Street occupied by the local Ray’s supermarket was Jacksonville’s baseball field in the early 1900s, home to the Jacksonville Gold Bricks baseball team. Team owner, George “Bum” Neuber, constructed it in 1902 to take the place of an older field at “Bybee’s Grove,” a mile out of town. Fans could now enjoy a grandstand along with the hotly contested games, but you had to have a ticket!

Like many things, it began with a dream…. After John Trudeau, principal trombonist with the Portland Symphony (now the Oregon Symphony) played trombone in the early 1950s at Massachusetts’ Tanglewood Music Festival, summer home of the Boston Symphony, he dreamed of establishing a summer music festival on the west coast. When John’s close friend Sam McKinney discovered Jacksonville on a summer trip to Southern Oregon in August 1962, he thought of John’s music festival dream.