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The cul-de-sac off E. California Street in Jacksonville now known as Beekman Square was originally the site of St. Mary’s School. Established in 1865 by three members of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, it operated as a 12-year boarding and day school for the daughters of the more well-to-do pioneer families. It graduated its first student in 1871. St. Mary’s moved to Medford in 1908 and became co-educational in the late 1920s. It’s currently serves middle and

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ride in a stagecoach? An 1865 traveler between Jacksonville and Yreka wrote about the “luxury” of travel in a stagecoach, or “mud wagon,” as they were called. Picture a covered wagon. “Inside there are three seats, cushioned with leather cushions, more solid in feeling than the boards beneath, while the floor has several good large cracks, suitable for the free circulation of cold air, and which are highly instrumental in maki

Before the Jacksonville Trolley began offering narrated history tours, visitors and residents alike could board a stagecoach operated by George McUne for a 15-minute tour of the town. After traveling in a covered wagon from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon as part of Oregon’s 1959 Centennial Wagon Train, McUne had sent to the Smithsonian for original Wells Fargo stagecoach plans and handcrafted a replica. In 1961, he began offering stagecoach tours of Jacksonville. The coach

If you’re feeling cooped up these days, the Sterling Ditch Trail just 8 miles south of Jacksonville offers year-round intermediate level hiking, mountain biking, and equestrian opportunities. But silver was never mined here, so where does the name come from? With warm weather and sunshine, most of us are just itching to enjoy outdoor activities, so how about a hike on the Sterling Ditch Trail. Just 8 miles south of Jacksonville, the trail offers year-round intermediate leve

Both John Cantrall and Patrick Fehely, featured in our last 2 History Trivia Tuesdays, mined in Sterlingville, located about 6 miles south of Jacksonville. An entire town sprang up after miners James Sterling and Aaron Davis struck gold in 1854 in nearby Sterling Creek. With the gold miners came boarding houses, saloons, general stores, a casino, a dance hall, a barbershop and blacksmith shop and many houses. Within 2 years Sterlingville was home to over 800 people; at its pe

Did you know that Stonewall Jackson helped build the 1883 Jackson County Courthouse (now Jacksonville’s New City Hall)? No, not the Confederate general. This Stonewall Jackson was a half breed Indian. His father, a native of Tennessee, had come soon after the Mexican American War to part of the Oregon Territory (now Washington) where he married a Yakima Indian girl. Stonewall came to Jacksonville with a relative, obtained a job with George Holt, a building contractor, and

Historic Jacksonville, Inc. has reached the last of our series of Jacksonville, Oregon, “firsts”! The streetlamps that light many town intersections are reproductions similar to the originals. However, according to Chris Kenney, the town’s original lighting was mounted on buildings (and may have been mounted on poles depending on the definition of “posts”). Chris was the grandson of Daniel M. Kenney who had opened the town’s first trading post in 1852, a tent structure at the

The small house now located at 415 East C Street is not only one of Jacksonville’s oldest wooden buildings, but also one of the most frequently moved. Constructed some time in the late 1850s, the house “built by Strickland” was purchased in September 1859 “for the County Clerk’s office, Sheriff’s office, and jury rooms…and removed to the Court House block” where it stood at the corner of 6th and C streets. For 25 years, all the daily business of Jackson County’s Clerk and She

The Table Rock Billiard Saloon, constructed in 1860, was also Jacksonville’s first museum. Saloonkeeper Herman Von Helms collected fossils and oddities to attract a clientele that then stayed for his lager. For many years the saloon also functioned as an informal social and political headquarters, home to business deals, court decisions, and even trials. Fire gutted the building in 1960, leaving only the façade. The restored structure now houses the Good Bean Coffee House.

The building at 155-165 S. Oregon Street in Jacksonville that now houses Good Bean Coffee was built in 1860 by German immigrants Herman von Helms and John Wintjen, partners in the “Table Rock Bakery.” This Italianate brick structure replaced their earlier wood frame bakery that also provided space for a butcher shop, groceries, and supplies. Helms and Wintjen may have operated their bakery into the mid-1870s. As entrepreneurs, it’s quite likely they became saloonkeepers after

Prior to the coming of the telegraph, news was transmitted by mail that was carried by travelers, pony express, and then stages. The news could be weeks, even months, old before it reached Jacksonville. Even after Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in the 1830s and created the dot-dash-space Morse code to represent letters, numbers, and punctuations, it was May 24, 1844, before the first message was sent between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.— “What hath God wrought?” It w

Everyone’s necessary accessory, the cell phone, represents a huge leap from the beginning of Jacksonville’s telephone service. The plaque and display windows on the telephone exchange building at the northwest corner of California and Oregon streets tell only part of the story of the telephone coming to Jacksonville. After Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876, demand for this novel invention spread. Initially, pairs of telephones

We wish the Jessers well with their new Ashland store, the Culinarium, although we bemoan our loss of the Jacksonville Mercantile. However, the building at 120 East California Street has seen a lot of reincarnations over the years. Built as a warehouse around 1861, it was later home to The Oregon Sentinel and the Luy and Keegan Saloon. In 1931, it was Amy’s Café—a combination of saloon, restaurant, market and bookstore. It was subsequently a grocery store, then a book store,

Thomas Fletcher Royal, who raised the money for and oversaw the completion of Jacksonville’s St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in 1854, preached for over 50 years becoming one of the most widely known and longest serving pioneer clergyman in the Pacific Northwest. The Jacksonville circuit was his first Oregon assignment. In addition to filling multiple pulpits, he was also heavily involved in education. He played a major role in the development of Jackson County’s early

Thomas Fletcher Royal, who raised the money for and oversaw the completion of Jacksonville’s St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in 1854, preached for over 50 years becoming one of the most widely known and longest serving pioneer clergyman in the Pacific Northwest. The Jacksonville circuit was his first Oregon assignment. In addition to filling multiple pulpits, he was also heavily involved in education. He played a major role in the development of Jackson County’s early