It’s Walkabout Wednesday!
 
 
The Club is part of the legacy of Storm Large, Jacksonville’s Great Dane “history ambassador” who, on every Wednesday for over 7 years, shared our town’s historic sites along with their stories.
 
We’d like to introduce you to Caliban and Ariel, two 5-year-old Smooth Collies named after characters from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”  Although born two months apart in different litters, they think of themselves as “brother and sister.”  Cali is the dark tri-colored male; Ariel the light sable-colored female.
Learn more about the origins of Walkabout Wednesday by clicking here.
 
 

 
Caliban & Ariel
 

Today the dynamic duo are checking out the Weiss House at 650 Sterling Street. The house is actually multiple buildings with “back stories” tracing Jacksonville’s growth. 

In 1866, the City deeded a large parcel of land between S. Oregon and South 3rd streets to John Weiss, an immigrant from Alsace-Lorraine.  He and his wife Elizabeth had arrived in Jacksonville in 1852 and constructed the original farmhouse no later than 1873.  The property was divided following Weiss’ death in 1895 and passed through multiple hands.  The portion containing the original farmhouse was usually referred to as “the house near the end of South Oregon Street” since Sterling Street was not yet in existence. 

In 1943, the property was bought by A.L. and Olive Kitchen.  They made the farmhouse their home while again dividing the property into what became known as “the Kitchen Subdivision,” creating Sterling Street in the process. 

The “Kitchen House” was sold to Alvin and Florence Minshall in 1948.  Minshall was a building contractor and post-World War II avid recycler. In 1951, Minshall and his friends loaded two barracks buildings and a maintenance shed from Camp White, now White City, onto a flatbed truck and brought them home.  They are now the long great room and garage of the current residence. 

Camp White was a World War II Army training base. At its peak, the camp occupied nearly 50,000 acres and contained nearly 40,000 people, making it the second-largest city in Oregon at the time. 

 

 


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