It’s Walkabout Wednesday!
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Redmen’s Hall
Ariel and Caliban are looking thirsty as they eye the Boomtown Saloon on the ground floor of Jacksonville’s Redmen’s Hall at 105 West California Street.
This corner of California and South 3rd streets was for many years home to the New State Billiard and Drinking Saloon, a long-lived Jacksonville drinking establishment dating at least to 1857. The present 2-story brick structure was built around 1884 for the International Order of Redmen following the 1884 fire that took out most of the block and destroyed this building’s 2-story wood frame predecessor.
The Improved Order of Redmen was a popular fraternal society claiming descent from the instigators of the Boston Tea Party. Jacksonville boasted three tribes—the English-speaking Pocahontas Tribe No. 1, the German-speaking Stamm No. 148, and the Haymakers Association. In 1884, the societies jointly contracted with brick mason George Holt for the construction of Redmen’s Hall at this corner. Sadly, the Redmen were unable to pay off their construction debt and relinquished title in 1891.
The building subsequently housed mercantile and hardware stores until the 1940s when it became the original home of the J’ville Tavern. Which brings us back to Ariel and Caliban quenching their thirst. They know the sign says “No Minors,” and they are only 7 years old. But that would be 49 in dog years—shouldn’t that count?
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Old City Hall
Ariel and Caliban, our two Smooth Collie tour guides, appear to be auditioning to be docents at Jacksonville’s 1881 Old City Hall, soon to be the home base for the town’s new “Museum without Walls”!
Old City Hall stands at the intersection of S. Oregon and Main streets, the heart of Jacksonville’s original business district, on the site of the 1st brick building in town—the1854 Maury & Davis Dry Goods store. Reuben Maury and Benjamin Davis ran a very successful general merchandise business at this location until 1861. Their partnership ended with the outbreak of the Civil War when Maury became an officer in the Union Army; Davis, a nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, was claimed by family ties.
Various enterprises occupied the original building until a fire in October 1874 gutted the interior. The burnt-out building sat empty until the Board of Trustees purchased the site for a town hall. Bricks from the original store were recycled into the current building’s construction. Completed in 1881, Jacksonville’s Old City Hall was the oldest Oregon government building remaining in continuous use until 2020 when all government business was moved to the town’s New City Hall.
Jacksonville’s “Museum without Walls” project will convert Old City Hall into the physical base of a citywide museum that shares the history of Jacksonville’s National Historic Landmark District through on-site exhibits and physical and virtual tours, offering an overview of the town’s history and its role as the 19th century regional hub of Southern Oregon, introducing guests to ways they can explore the town and its history, and explaining tour options. Interactive exhibits augmented by multiple tour options will highlight aspects of the town’s history—Indigenous people; gold rush and donation land claims along with the miners, settlers, and merchants they attracted; the Chinese and Oregon’s first Chinatown; the coming of the railroad; the town’s decline; the Great Depression and Jacksonville’s second “gold rush”; and the town’s renaissance.
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Colvig House
Our smooth Collie club members, Ariel and Caliban, are visiting the Colvig House, the Classical Revival style home at the corner of Fir and S. Oregon—although it may be better known as the “Bozo the Clown” house.
The house was actually built in the late 1870s for George Schumpf. A native of Alsace, Germany, Schumpf was Jacksonville’s town barber for most of his life, also providing “bathing rooms and bathtubs” in his California Street shop. Following the death of his first wife in 1887, Schumpf sold the house to William and Addie Colvig.
William Colvig, a lawyer, served three terms as Jackson County District Attorney. After this appointment, he finally got around to taking the bar exam. Colvig was an authority on Shakespeare and spoke fluent Chinook, the language of the local Indian tribe. He was also a soldier and was among the party of soldiers that first mapped Crater Lake. He was known as “Judge Colvig,” although the title was honorary. The only thing he claimed to be a judge of was “good whiskey”!
We’ve already noted that the house is also known as the “Bozo the Clown House.” Vance “Pinto” Colvig, the youngest of the Colvig children, was the original creator of Bozo the Clown. Pinto, so nicknamed because of his freckles, worked as an animator for Walt Disney and supplied many Disney cartoon voices, including those of Goofy, Pluto and two of the seven dwarfs. He also wrote the song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.”
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Rich Gulch
With spring’s wildflowers in bloom, our smooth collie club members, Ariel and Caliban, are ready to explore the Jacksonville Woodlands’ Rich Gulch Trail that stretches between the trail head at the top of W. Fir Street and S. Oregon Street. It follows old hydraulically mined gulches and glory holes dating to the 1860s.
The term “Rich Gulch” was actually applied to the entire area after 2 “packers” hauling goods from Portland to the Northern California mines publicized their discovery of gold in early 1852. They had learned about gold when they stopped for the night with the local Indian agent whose son and hired hand had found gold in Jackson Creek in the fall of 1851. The packers, James Clugage and James Poole, struck pay dirt in nearby Daisy Creek and filed donation land claims when they arrived in Yreka.
Rather than keeping the discovery to himself, Clugage publicized their find! Within days, a thousand miners poured over the Siskiyous and began mining the area. And that was the beginning of Jacksonville! Poole returned to mining; Clugage became rich selling parcels from his donation land claim.
[As an incentive to settle the Oregon Territory, in 1850 Congress allotted free land to settlers who built a residence and cultivated their acreage for 4 years. In 1852, individuals could claim 160 acres; couples, 320 acres.]
The location of the original Rich Gulch may be open to question. In January of 1867, a major rainstorm overflowed Jackson Creek, washing out old mining claims and flooding businesses and homes. A newspaper account feared that the deluge would break through an old mining tunnel, cutting a new channel and “discharging into Rich Gulch at the [County] clerk’s office.” That would seem to place the actual “Rich Gulch” in the in the vicinity of what is now Jacksonville’s “Courthouse Square” and New City Hall!
Regardless of location, Jacksonville remains a “Rich Gulch” with multiple attractions to offer us all!
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Fehely House
Ariel and Caliban are admiring the bricks at Jacksonville’s Fehely House at 710 South 3rd Street.
When 34-year-old Sarah Jane Fehely died from typhoid in 1871, she left her husband Patrick with 7 children to raise. Following the Fehely’s marriage 20 years earlier, the birthplaces of their children traced their travels in pursuit of gold from Wisconsin to Jacksonville. “Fehely Gulch” near Lewiston in Northern California marks one of their stops.
The Fehelys arrived in Jacksonville prior to the 1860 census, which shows Patrick as a “farmer.” During the next decade he appears to have periodically left his wife and children, venturing to gold fields in Idaho and Montana and engaging in farming near Seattle. He had returned to Jacksonville prior to Sarah Jane’s death, and 2 years later built this 2-story brick home for his family.
The 1870 census shows Patrick employed as a “brick maker.” He is credited with constructing many of Jacksonville’s early brick commercial buildings, possibly in partnership with fellow Irishman P.J. Ryan. Fehely’s brickyard was reportedly located behind his house on Daisy Creek and considerable amounts of brick have been found in the area.
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Cantrall House
Smooth Collies Caliban and Arial caught the last of the town’s recent snow while visiting the Moore-Cantrall house at 635 South 3rd Street.
This one-story wood frame house was built in 1878 for William Moore. Natives of Pennsylvania, Moore and his wife Rebecca had arrived in Jacksonville 3 years earlier. His occupation is listed in early censuses as “laborer.”
In 1899, the Moores sold the house to Sarah Cantrall. Sarah had moved to town 9 years earlier after the death of her husband John. John Cantrall had come to Southern Oregon in the late 1850s and mined Sterling Creek during the boom years. In 1865, the Cantrall family left Sterling Creek and took up an 80-acre land claim across the Applegate River from Uniontown. Cantrall continued to mine and farm for the next 25 years, also purchasing adjoining land.
From pioneer days to the present, a rock rimmed pool on the Cantrall’s Applegate River property was a natural swimming hole. In 1960 the Bureau of Land Management built a bridge across the river just above the swimming hole to access some of its forest tracts. The bridge made it possible for the Jackson County Parks Department to purchase 45 acres and develop a large park, now known as the popular Cantrall-Buckley Park in honor of the Cantralls and their neighbors.
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Mark Applegate House
Ariel and Caliban, 5-year-old smooth Collies, are visiting one of Jacksonville’s few board and batten houses.
Located at 655 South 3rd Street, it’s commonly known as the “Mark Applegate House,” although it would be more accurate to call it the “Josephine Applegate House.” If the Applegate name sounds familiar, that’s because Josephine was married to Peter Applegate, the youngest son of Jesse Applegate of Applegate Trail fame. Jesse was considered the most influential member of Oregon’s provisional legislature and one of the top 100 leading citizens during Oregon’s first century.
His son Peter was a Jackson County surveyor and was elected 3 terms as County Recorder and 1 term as County Assessor before being appointed as state land agent. In 1872 he had married Josephine Estes who acquired this property in 1903. This 1 ½ story wood unpainted wood frame structure would have been constructed about that time.
Mark Applegate, who is often associate with this house, was one of 10 children born to Peter and Josephine. Peter Applegate died in 1916 and 3 years later Josephine sold the house.
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Long Tom Sluice Box
Ariel and Caliban are at the “long tom” sluice box on West Main Street. This stretch was Jacksonville’s original business district and later Oregon’s first Chinatown. The “long tom,” installed around 2000, recognizes the gold miners who were the locale’s first residents.
The earliest miners were “placer” miners, scooping creek bottom silt into pans or shoveling it into rockers or long tom sluice boxes and using water to separate valuable ore from sediment. In pans or rockers, the heavier gold settled to the bottom and the miners could pick out the loose flakes and occasional nugget. The sluice box, essentially a sloping trough, allowed more dirt to be searched. Some sluice boxes could be hundreds of feet long, but the long tom is a small one, usually 6 to 12 feet long and 12 to 20 inches wide. It required much less water but a lot more labor.
Dirt would be placed in the upper section, the “tom,” which acted like a large hopper with a screen. As water was poured into the top, a miner would rake it to break up clods and screen out larger rocks. The slurry would then pour into the second section where a series of “riffles,” essentially raised slats of wood, would trap the heavier gold deposits. This is a very simplistic explanation and a lot more information can be found on the internet.
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Weiss House
Ariel and Caliban 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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“Jail”
Ariel and Caliban are in front of the barred door and “Jail” sign on the Oregon Street side of Jacksonville’s Old City Hall at the corner of S. Oregon and W. Main streets. It’s the doorway to one of 2 “calabooses,” i.e., jail cells, that were incorporated into the building’s 1880s architecture. (The other “calaboose” is accessed from inside the building.) From 1881 until the 1930s or ‘40s, the two cells were used to house the town’s “delinquents.” Translation: it was the town’s drunk tank. However, Ariel, who is known for getting into a bit of mischief, appears to be wondering if she might be seeing the interior sooner rather than later!