Mellisa Taylor House

Until 1888 a dwelling stood at the southwest corner of California and Oregon, now home to Las Palmas, Country Quilts, and the Jacksonville Review. By 1890, Melissa Taylor had converted it into a boarding house, expanding the property over the next 20 years. Although she apparently sold it to the Abbott family after her husband’s death in 1908, a 1930’s Sanborn map still shows it as the Taylor House apartments.

By 1953 it was operating as Lulu’s Café and Tavern which, according to a Jackson County Vice Report, offered “flagrant gambling on pinball machines…bootlegging illicit whiskey… after hours harlots especially on Friday and Saturday nights.” The current cinderblock buildings, constructed in the 1950s, originally housed Jacksonville’s Pioneer Club and the town’s post office.