May 21, 2019

Jacksonville’s Warren Lodge No. 10 of the Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, founded in 1855, was the first Masonic order south of Salem to construct a meeting hall. The original 1858 lodge building stood on the block now occupied by new City Hall (the historic County Courthouse), and for a number of years leased space to Jackson County for offices and courtroom before selling them the building. The current Masonic temple at the corner of California and Oregon streets was constructed between 1874 and 1877 by brick mason, George Holt. Completed in 1877, it’s the oldest temple structure in Oregon in continuous use as a Masonic meeting hall. The lodge had acquired the property after an 1874 fire at that corner destroyed the “almost unimaginable conglomeration of frame shops, sheds, and outbuildings”— “many of the ancient landmarks” of early Jacksonville—including the notorious El Dorado Saloon. The saloon had stood on that corner from as early as spring of 1852, attracting “gamblers, courtesans, sharpers of every kind, the class that struck prosperous mining camps like a blight.” [We should note that even after the El Dorado was destroyed, there were plenty of other saloons remaining!]