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In 1863 R. Sergeant Dunlap was appointed the first sexton of Jacksonville’s Pioneer Cemetery. He served in that capacity for many years – maintaining the cemetery grounds, selling plots, digging graves, and keeping the cemetery records. However, what’s known as the Sexton’s Tool House at the top of Cemetery Road was not constructed until 1878. The tool house also doubled as a mortuary. An underground vault provided storage for bodies when the ground was too frozen or too sogg

The array of businesses at the southeast corner of California and 5th streets were once home to a Shell service station as early as the 1920s owned by R.A. Childers and R. McKee. Although Jacksonville was becoming a backwater, “automobile-ing” was popular and the town even boasted a “car camp” where you could park and sleep overnight. The station was subsequently sold to Otto Heckert, and in 1950, Liz Shrout Legg Pursell and her first husband, Dick Legg, purchased the Shell s

The house at the southeast corner of 6th and D used to be the Sheriff’s house—conveniently located across the street from the county jail. It fell to the Sheriff’s wife to feed whatever citizens were enjoying “county hospitality.” Since our winters can get cold and wet, a resourceful Sheriff supposedly had a tunnel dug from this home, under the street and into the jail, so his wife could supply the necessary meals with a minimum of hardship. However, later residents have not

What is variously known as the Sifers or Savage house at 160 West C Street is one of oldest residences still standing in Jacksonville. The eastern portion of the house was built in the late 1850s or early 1860s by John Sifers, a Prussian immigrant, and at the time was the only dwelling on the block. Sifers later moved to Kerbyville where he became a county judge and later State Senator for Josephine County. In 1865, Charles Savage purchased both this property and the remainin

Courtesy of the January 7, 1938, “Medford News”, it seems that Mrs. Cleora Bixby, who lived on the Jacksonville-Phoenix road, never had much use for skunks. When they started getting into her chicken coop, she took it upon herself to do something about it. Someone told her that if she’d grab a skunk by the tail and hold it up, the skunk couldn’t spray. So the next time she heard a skunk in her pen, she snuck up on it and grabbed its tail. But now what to do with it? She set o

South Stage Cellars, at 125 South 3rd Street in Jacksonville, has had many incarnations. Built around 1865 by Irish immigrant P.J. Ryan as his residence, it subsequently housed hotels, a restaurant, a doctor’s office, a butcher shop, an ice cream parlor, and a saloon. In the 1960s it became the home of Robertson Collins, the individual credited with preventing Highway 238 from taking out 11 of Jacksonville’s historical homes and the leader of the organization that established

At least Jacksonville’s First Church is not open to debate. St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, now located at the corner of North 5th and D streets, was completed in 1854—the first church built in Jacksonville, the first church built in southwestern Oregon, and the oldest wood frame structure in town. It was erected in 1854 and dedicated New Year’s Day 1855. It is also one of a handful of churches claiming the title of “Oldest Protestant Church West of the Rockies.” Tw

Did you know that the Old Rose Garden next to Jacksonville’s 1854 St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church on North 5th Street is not only a garden but also a cemetery? In March of 1960, the Medford Rose Society and the City of Jacksonville entered into an agreement to set aside the lot immediately north of the church for an Old Rose Garden. Planted by the Medford Rose Society, the garden only contained varieties of roses that originated before 1867. Many of the species were

St. Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, now located at the corner of North 5th and D streets, was completed in 1854—the first church built in Jacksonville, the first church built in southwestern Oregon, and the oldest wood frame structure in town. At some point a parsonage was also constructed on California Street, just east of what became the site of the historic Presbyterian Church. As the Presbyterian Church neared completion in 1881, the Methodist Episcopal Trustees chos

Shortly after the discovery of gold in Jacksonville in 1852, Reverend James Croke celebrated the first Catholic mass in the home of a local resident. In 1855, Croke reported to the Archbishop that he had counted 105 Catholics in the Rogue Valley alone. In 1858, James Cluggage, donation land claim owner of most of the original Jacksonville townsite, deeded the 100’ x 200’ parcel at the corner of 4th and D streets for $5 for “the use and benefit of the Catholic Church.” St.