A Little Museum History….
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.
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 reopened as a saloon, the local newspaper invited “persons possessing curiosities and specimens” to “bring them in” where they would be placed in the “Cabinet of Curiosities for inspection.” In 1875, the saloon and “Cabinet” boasted a potato which weighed three pounds.
Helms’ early newspaper advertisements would invite people to visit his museum, then “stay for his fine lager.” By 1879 the Roseburg Independent reported that Helms “Cabinet of Curiosities” included stalactites from the Oregon Caves; freaks of nature such as four-legged chickens and two-headed turkeys; a mastodon tusk found in the Applegate;
the “head and horns of a greater ox than the world is now acquainted with measuring 18 inches across the smaller part of the skull”; hundreds of geological specimens and “petrifications”; a gold nugget valued at $700; a large collection of Indian relics including a bow and arrow used by Modoc Captain Jack; curious coins; and more. The newspaper declared the collection to be “the best in the state” with “many specimens which require study on the part of the naturalist—many to puzzle the historian—and a great deal for the geologist to ponder over.”
When the saloon closed in 1914, the Helms’ “Cabinet of Curiosities” collection of artifacts was valued at $50,000. It encompassed “every possible manner of relic…mutely telling pages in the early history of Jackson County.” Even before the Table Rock Saloon closed, the Southern Oregon Pioneer Society considered establishing a museum. At its September 1910 meeting, the Society considered a proposition for a museum of pioneer relics. Backed by the Native Daughters of Oregon,
the proposal was “to build a log cabin similar to the first one erected in Jacksonville in March 1852, and to furnish it with a fireplace and the primitive furniture and relics of pioneer days.” It was noted that there was “ample material in the pioneer homes of Rogue River Valley to make the museum a most interesting feature.”For years residents lamented the closing of the Table Rock, primarily for the loss of its “Cabinet of Curiosities” since Jacksonville never seemed to have a shortage of saloons. When Paramount Pictures released “The Covered Wagon” in 1923—the film industry’s first historical “Epic Big Screen Western”—it intensified local interest in “old pioneer days” since the silent movie depicted the settlement of Oregon. “The Covered Wagon” became one of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of the first half of the 1920s, and a Jacksonville
museum became more than wishful thinking. Inspired by the film and the upcoming Jacksonville reunion of the Pioneer Society of Southern Oregon, Mrs. Alice Applegate Sargent purchased the 1855 Brunner Building at the corner of Main and South Oregon streets with the goal of creating “a repository for pioneer relics.” The museum opened briefly for the society’s annual meeting in October 1924, then had its formal opening February 27, 1925. Open on Tuesdays and Fridays, local newspapers reported that it attracted so many visitors that Mrs. Sargent and her assistant were kept very busy!
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