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 corner of Oregon and California streets.
An 83-year-old Chris describes the lights in his 1966 Memoirs: “The original street lights consisted of a post on various corners with 4 sided glass frame metal top to shed the weather and a metal fount and glass chimney with burner and wick burning coal oil. The City Marshall carried a small stepladder and a coal oil can to fill the fount. He went around every evening to light them and then another trip to blow them out. One of the old glass cases adorns the corner of the Odd Fellows Hall, today electrified.”