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Dennis Burg reads the water levels in February 2008 at Big Butte Springs, the source of Medford city water.
By Tony Boom for the Mail Tribune
I
n the second half of the Roaring ’20s, city expansion hit Medford. Between 1925 and 1929, 14 new additions to town were platted, although none had occurred in the preceding five years. The population increased 91 percent in the decade to 11,007. Medford Water Commission, created by voters in 1922 to address water quality issues, was in line to meet the increases as it started delivery of water from the newly developed Big Butte Springs in 1927. The 2020s won’t likely see that kind of growth, according to projections. What the public will see is work to replace aging infrastructure, fewer meter readers, expansion of treatment plant capacity on the Rogue River
part of the strategy in order to soften the impact on our rate payers,” said Taylor. The commission is currently debt free and has been on a pay-as-you go and likely requests to voters to basis. Expansion of the Robert finance upgrades after several A. Duff Treatment Plant on the decades without bond measures, Rogue River to 45 million gallons says Brad Taylor, Medford Water per day capacity was completed in Commission general manager. 2000 without bonding. About 136,000 customers Initial work to expand the Duff get water from MWC. Most are plant to 65 million gallons per Medford residents, but the disday, started in 2017, has been trict also supplies Central Point, completed. But several more Jacksonville, Phoenix, Talent, two phases of the work are ahead water districts and the White City before the plant can go to the area. Ashland can be served on an new capacity, projected for 2028. emergency basis. Growth of Medford and other “With the challenges that we cities doesn’t mean a straight-line are anticipating in the next 10 increase in water consumption. years and beyond, we do anticipate that bonding will become MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVE PHOTO
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FROM WATER, PAGE 4
“We are seeing the per capita water use coming down. Even when the population grows, it does not necessarily mean more (system) growth,” said Taylor. Plumbing codes have required greater efficiency, and cultural awareness of droughts have people using less water, he said. MWC follows Portland State University growth projections, currently a little over one percent per year for Medford, for planning purposes. Medford Planning Director Matt Brinkley says right now growth is exceeding that projection. His department works with MWC to keep it informed on upcoming developments as land is added to the city. Water inflow into Big Butte Springs from rain and snowpack has been on the decline with climate change. That’s part of what is driving the expansion at Duff. Plans for a second, standalone plant at Duff won’t be pursued, but future expansions of the plant are likely. New intakes for the plant will be constructed to replace the aging ones currently in use, but the permitting process puts that toward the end of the decade, Taylor said. Unhappy with water quality from a dam at Fish Lake, Medford residents in November 1922 approved formation of MWC. Water rights to Big Butte Springs were secured in 1925, and in the same year voters approved sale of $975,000 in bonds — to develop the springs and build pipelines to town — by nearly a 3-to-1 margin. Thirty miles of steel pipeline were installed, and water started flowing through the system in 1927. A plaque at Big Butte Springs lists the names of the original water commissioners, who promised “a mountain spring in every home.” Water sales to outside towns was approved by voters in 1930. After some water shortages in immediate post World War II years, the commission constructed a second water intake at Big Butte Springs that doubled capacity to 26 million gallons per day. Voters approved a $2.8 million bond measure for the work in 1950. In 1966, voters approved a $2.6 million bond to create the Duff treatment plant to provide additional water for the city and its customers. The plant,
Creighton Nevin, front, and Joe Watson of the Medford Water Commission search in 2016 for lead pipes on West Eighth Street.
intakes and mains were completed in 1968 and are in use from April into fall to add to the Big Butte supply. Water main replacement, changes to meter reading and reservoir tank replacement will also happen over the next decade. “The good news for us is we are just 100 years old,” said Taylor, noting that a lot of utilities on the East Coast are dealing with much older infrastructure. Currently in Medford about 1,700 meters are read by data transmission towers, but another 17,000 send data to vehicles driven through neighborhoods, while 12,000 meters are still read manually. Within six years the entire system should be transmitting data, said Taylor.
“We do anticipate replacing a number of existing tanks and possibly two new reservoirs,” Taylor said of water storage sites. “We are really in the initial planning phase at this point.” Other initiatives the commission is pursuing include upgrading emergency preparedness of both facilities and staff and making the public aware of potential impacts, water quality improvements and partnerships with others. “As we move into the next 100 years, we all have to come together to tackle resource restraints and to tackle water management wisely,” said Taylor. Reach Ashland freelance writer Tony Boom at tboomwriter@gmail.com. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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SECTION EDITOR David Smigelski
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By Tammy Asnicar for the Mail Tribune
A
dozen young Native American men stood on the steps of San Francisco’s city hall, waiting patiently for the bang of the starter’s pistol. It was mid-morning on June 14, 1927, and they were about embark on a grueling 480-mile footrace through the redwoods of the Northern California coast and up and over the Siskiyou Mountains into downtown Grants Pass. As they waited, a speaker explained that the “Great Redwood Highway Indian Marathon” was being sponsored by the Redwood Empire Association to publicize the scenic attractions along the newly completed highway between San Francisco and Grants Pass. There was a $1,000 prize for the first runner to cross the finish line. The boosters felt they would garner more media coverage with a “members-of-the-Indian-race”-only event — the “wild” image reflecting the wild and scenic Redwood Empire. Twenty-three-year-old John “Mad Bull” Southard, a Happy Camp, California, resident and member of the Karuk tribe, won that inaugural race, crossing the finish line seven days, 12 hours and 34 minutes later. In an April 8, 1984 interview with a writer for California Living Magazine, he recalled having to stop every four hours to change into fresh socks and dry running shoes, which were boxer’s footgear with double soles. In addition to the $1,000 prize, he
An adventurous driver braves the unpaved Redwood Highway.
collected a $100 bonus when he passed designated spots along the route. The marathon was held again in 1928, but due to injuries Southard had to pull out. The stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression put the brakes on the event. It was never held again. The Great Redwood Highway Indian Marathon was just one of several
publicity stunts to spur tourism through the Redwood Empire and to the “Pacific Wonderland.” After nearly a decade of work, the first all-weather road linking San Francisco to the inland Rogue Valley opened to travelers in 1926. Meanwhile, boosters lobbied to have the name of Grants Pass-Crescent City Highway 25 changed in 1924 to Redwood Highway (today Highway 199).
JOSEPHINE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY PHOTO
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Redwood Highway runs through the redwoods (left) in the days before it was paved. Before a tunnel was built, Highway 199 climbed steeply (below) up Oregon Mountain.
While the 1920s “roared” in much of the country, the economy in Oregon, and in particular Southern Oregon, was sputtering. One of the impediments to economic prosperity was the state’s transportation system. Oregon had a network of railroad, stage and steamboat routes, but its road system could only be described as primitive. By 1913, only 25 miles were paved in Oregon. After passing the nation’s first state tax for roads in 1919, which was a mere one-cent per gallon, Oregon’s “Good Roads Movement” was underway. The “Get Oregon Out of the Mud” campaign was especially critical to Josephine County, where farmers and manufacturers relied on railroads, toll roads and rugged, nearly impassable
wagon trails to get their commodities to market. The growing popularity of the Oregon Caves brought about improvements along Caves Highway, but automobile travel was still hampered by the inadequate road system leading to and from what was then called
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PHOTOS
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SEE REDWOOD, PAGE 10
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SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (LEFT) JOSEPHINE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY (RIGHT);
“Cave City Junction.” The first road from Grants Pass to Crescent City was a narrow, winding unpaved mountain trail first forged by foot, then pack horses and wagons, and later horse-drawn stagecoaches.
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also posed challenges. In the 1920s, motorists moved at a slower clip, but not always by choice. One could make the trip in 12 hours barring overheating motors and flat tires. Before steel-belted radials, balloon tires were vulnerable to blowouts, and how far one’s “shoes” could travel also depended on whether roads were graveled, oiled or macadamized — the Grants Pass to Crescent City route was a series of muddy wagon roads
Wonderland had to be registered with local police, who would give the driver a 90-day permit. The fastest horse-drawn stage could The first driver’s license law was make the 90-mile trek in 24 hours, and enacted in Grants Pass in 1920. The fee in 1914, the early auto stages cut the was 25 cents, and the driver had to be trip in half. 16 or older and have at least five days Although travelers no longer had driving experience. to rest their tired horses periodically As hoped-for, the completion of on the long haul over the mountains, Redwood Highway was a boon to local it was still a treacherous trek over tourism, with boosters spreading the Oregon Mountain and down and around Patrick word about Creek. the majestic An early redwoods, the Grants Pass spectacular newspaper Oregon Caves, reporter wrote the wild and this about scenic Rogue traveling River and the through the abundance of Smith River salmon and corridor: steelhead. “The modern In the late (underpow1920s and into ered) vehicle the 1930s, travels up the Grants Pass steep grade led Oregon in at 10 miles out-of-state an hour, registrations. and coasts In Septemdownward at ber 1928, a speed only there was a limited by 32 percent the driver’s increase over nerve and September Giant redwoods tower over the highway named after the majestic trees. ability to turn 1927, and in sharp corners, October 1928, where one there was a skid of a foot could plunge the whole party down the improved only by crude plank and cor- 54 percent increase over the previous October. mountainside to instant death on the duroy before it was completely paved In 2020, the 90-mile trip to Crescent rocks below.” in 1929. For the faint of heart, auto stage City from Grants Pass can be made at Not only did highway tourists need drivers were hired to maneuver the a fast and furious pace of 90 minutes, to be handy with a jack and monkey tortuous curves and the long, steep wrench, drivers also needed reliable or two hours depending on the weather grades. The high-risk factor forced one maps and guidebooks listing the rules and photo opps along the scenic Smith new White Steamer automobile owner of the road. River corridor and the Redwoods to hire a lumber wagon to transport his In Oregon, for example, the speed National and State Parks. new car from Crescent City to Grants limit for passenger vehicles was 35 Reach Grants Pass writer Tammy Pass. mph outside city limits and 20 mph in The mechanics of those early autos Asnicar at tammyasnicar@q.com. town. Also, cars entering the Pacific FROM REDWOOD, PAGE 9
PHOTOS: JOSEPHINE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY (TOP); SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (CENTER)
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Thelma Perozzi wrote about Jackson County health as part of her coursework at the University of Oregon medical school in 1933. This chart from her report shows deaths in the 1920s from diseases that have largely been tamed by vaccinations.
Metropolitan Life Insurance company promoted diphtheria immunization in New York in the 1920s.
By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune
1927
was a very, very bad year for the health of Southern Oregon citizens. A typhoid epidemic threatened the community, dozens of children were crippled from infantile paralysis and meningitis, measles and smallpox ran rampant. By 1927, inoculation and vaccination were known to prevent
cholera, the plague, diphtheria, typhoid and smallpox — but the history of man’s response to disease shows a cycle of panic, reaction and indifference that slowed the control and eradication of many communicable diseases. Today it is all too easy to imagine that these terrible ailments are nightmares from a past time,
but the control and eradication of contagious disease has only been possible through widespread, systematic and ongoing vaccination programs. “Aside from sanitation, immunizations are perhaps the most significant public health discovery we’ve made,” notes Dr. Jim Shames, Jackson County medical director. The Oregon Health Authority reports that Jackson County has one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in the state.
PHOTOS: OHSU DIGITAL COLLECTIONS (TOP); COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA (CENTER)
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Meanwhile, Ashland is second to only Boulder, Colorado, as the least vaccinated city in the United States, according to AshlandChild.org, a website set up by concerned parents and health professionals. The Ashland School District reports that in some Ashland schools, only 38% of students are current on all vaccinations, and nonmedical vaccination exemptions are as high as 58%. In 2019, the Oregon House passed a bill — HB 3063 — that would have eliminated nonmedical vaccination exemptions. But when the bill moved to the Senate, Democrats agreed in a backroom deal with Republicans to kill it in exchange for Republicans’ agreement to return from a walkout and allow a $2 billion tax measure to fund schools. “We do know that socially, people who don’t vaccinate tend to cluster together, attend the same schools or go to similar community events,” says Andrea Krause, epidemiologist with Jackson County Public Health, “and so that does provide an environment where an infectious disease can take hold and get some momentum.” Eighty Jackson County citizens died of smallpox in 1927, far fewer than had been seen in the past. Those pus-filled eruptions let everyone know you were
diseased, and if you lived, you’d be scarred for life. Medford largely escaped because of a 1917 epidemic that caused most of the citizens to be vaccinated, but Salem, Roseburg, Grants Pass and Cottage Grove were hard hit. Klamath Falls reported 70-80 active cases in quarantine, but by Jan. 28, 1927, an aggressive vaccination program had been completed and smallpox was on the run in Klamath Falls, at least for the time being. In the late 1920s, infantile paralysis (polio) was epidemic in Jackson County, and in 1927, an epidemic broke out in Jackson County. In August of 1927, the Mail Tribune carried frantic reports of the disease throughout Southern Oregon, and barricades were set up to block travelers coming from infected areas. Rogue Valley towns canceled church services, closed schools and movie houses and prohibited public gatherings as they waited for the epidemic to pass. Until the development of the polio vaccine decades later, there was only the probability of death and disability. Thanks to school vaccination programs that started in the 1920s, baby immunizations and public health cluster tracking, some diseases are unknown today. The incidence of others, like measles, diphtheria and whooping
cough, have been reduced when immunization programs are widespread. In 1929, there were 235 cases of measles and 255 cases of scarlet fever reported in Jackson County. And even though Medford’s Dr. Elijah Pickel is said to have been the first physician in Oregon to administer the diphtheria antitoxin in 1895, local vaccination policies and practices were sporadic. Some highly contagious but preventable diseases, such as measles, are still a threat to public health because not enough of the population has been vaccinated to establish what health professionals call “herd immunity.” Herd immunity kicks in when 93%-94% of a group has been immunized; in 2017, the vaccination rate for measles was as low as 59% in two Ashland schools. “If you have a disease like measles, which is one of the most contagious diseases we know, you need a very large number of people protected in order to prevent its spread,” Shames said. “Immunizing the majority of people protects the community at large, and if enough people pull out of the agreement, then the population isn’t safe.” “If your neighbor and all your schoolmates decide that vaccinations aren’t needed,” Shames added, “then they’re really needed.”
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Suffragette Margaret Howe represented Oregon in a march in Washington, D.C.
An Oregonian article applauding Southern Oregon activists from Ashland, Medford, Klamath Falls and Grants Pass
By Tammy Asnicar for the Mail Tribune
I
n an election year when several women ran for president of the United States, and in a state like Oregon where the governor, secretary of state and attorney general all are women, a woman’s right to vote could easily be taken for granted. Oregon women won the right to vote in 1912, and they already were serving in state government by the time the 19th Amendment giving all women the vote was ratified in 1920. Kathryn Clarke was appointed in 1915 to serve in the state Senate, and Marian B. Towne of Phoenix became the first woman to serve in the state House of Representatives that same year. An assistant to Jackson County Clerk W.G.
Coleman, Towne had read and filed new laws passed by the Legislature that she considered “defective.” Believing she “might do better,” she ran for state office in 1914, the first time Oregon women were eligible. She served on three committees during the 1915 legislative session — education, health and public morals, and salaries — and introduced a bill that would have increased school funding and expanded the minimum school term from six to eight months. Recounting her time in Salem, Towne said, “A few of the men didn’t mind the idea of a woman colleague, but more of them did.”
Marian B. Towne of Phoenix was the first woman to serve in the Oregon House of Representatives.
PHOTOS FROM THE U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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She was not elected to a second Despite opposition, Duniway manterm. aged to get a proposed amendment to Oregon was in the forefront of the the state Constitution on the ballot five suffrage movement, thanks in large times — in 1884, 1900, 1906, 1908 and part to one woman, Abigail Scott Dun- 1912. Finally, on Nov. 12, 1912, Oregon iway. After a 42-year became the seventh fight, she finally was state to pass a suffrage able to cast her vote. amendment. At age 79, Duniway Duniway, like many was able to register to women of her day, had vote for the first time, to endure bitter attacks but she did not live to by Oregon newspaper see the 19th Amendeditors and slander by ment ratified. She died politicians in public Oct. 11, 1915, a few days meetings, and minisbefore her 81st birthday. ters from their pulpits. The national suffrage When she spoke in a movement relied on mining camp in Jackgrassroots efforts like sonville in 1879, she had that of the Southern eggs tossed at her and Oregon Equal Suffrage was burned in effigy. League. An OregoShe fought back by nian article applauded writing pithy editorials Southern Oregon in The New Northwest, activists from Ashland, the Portland-based human rights newspaMedford, Klamath Falls per she published. and Grants Pass. “They have left no “Women do not want stone unturned ... in to rule over men, as awakening interest, dis(the opposition) might seminating knowledge imagine, but are asking and scattering literature only for their individual and arguments in the rights and liberties,” furtherance of the welshe wrote. The issue wasn’t fare of women.” Mary Sinclair, a simply the right of Sylvia Thompson, a Democrat member of the Rogue women to vote, said from The Dalles who was Valley League of Duniway. The vote was the lone woman in the Oregon Women Voters, called merely a means to an Legislature, proposed ratifying the suffragists “brave end. Suffragists were the 19th Amendment giving women.” fighting for a new life for women the right to vote. Barbara Klein, a American women — a fellow member who life beyond child-bearing and child-rearing has worked on election — and for a voice in everything from reform on the national level, designed property rights and health care to educa- posters to mark the centennial of the tion and business ownership. passage of the 19th Amendment.
One poster has the words: “Forever grateful to stand on the shoulders of women who won our votes.” Congress passed the 19th Amendment June 4, 1919. However, 36 state legislatures had to ratify the amendment to place it in the U.S. Constitution. Sylvia Thompson, a Democrat from The Dalles who was Oregon’s lone woman in the state Legislature, proposed a resolution to ratify the 19th Amendment in the House of Representatives, while Robert Farrell, a Republican from Multnomah County, proposed a similar resolution in the Oregon Senate. However, Gov. Ben Olcott named Thompson as the sole sponsor of the bill, and she is the person most closely identified with the legislative actions needed to pass the amendment. (It should be noted that she was not referred to in print as Sylvia Thompson, but as Mrs. Alex Thompson.) Oregon became the 25th state to ratify the 19th Amendment Jan. 14, 1920, and women were able to vote in a national election for the first time in 1921. Hot-button topics of the 1920s look strikingly similar to those of the 2020s. Living conditions of the “foreign population,” tuberculosis control, aid to mothers and infants, U.S. membership in the World Court, hydroelectric power, state judicial system, tax limitations, teacher tenure, employment discrimination, vocational education, misuse of Common School Funds, birth control, state budget and school finance were just some of the items on the agenda. Like Sinclair, Lorraine Werblow has belonged to a chapter of LWV wherever she has lived for more than 45 years. “Some positions are 100 years old, we have not changed,” she said. “Unfortunately … it is the world that has changed.”
PHOTO FROM BAIN NEWS SERVICE / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune
T
he advent of radio in the 1920s brought news of the world to Southern Oregon, and brought news of Southern Oregon to the world. KMED’s first broadcast, Dec. 28, 1926, from the top floor of the Sparta Building in downtown Medford, ushered in the new information age. Sophisticated and not so sophisticated local
entertainment, daily news and weather reports, business opportunities and religious programming filled the airwaves, and every store that could offered radios for sale. Two broadcast towers atop the Sparta Building framed the Medford skyline and a line would connect the station to the Mail Tribune. A year and a month later, on Jan. 27, 1928, KMED’s founder, Bill Virgin, would die. KMED was still for five days, and the community rallied around Virgin’s widow,
Blanch, and the radio station. In 1941, KMED moved to its present location on Rossanley Drive in west Medford, and became an NBC affiliate in 1937. In 1946, Blanch Virgin sold KMED to Gibson Broadcasting. Today, KMED broadcasts at 1440 AM and 106.7 FM on the dial and is owned by Bicoastal Media, which operates radio stations in 12 Pacific Northwest markets, offering progressive and conservative talk radio, country music, classic rock and sports radio. Bill Meyer has been with the station since 2001 and
hosts a weekday talk radio show that he describes as “right of center.” “When KMED first went to news talk in 2001, our local show in the morning was strictly news, covering local news from 6 to 9, then national news, syndicated programming followed ours,” says Meyer. “And even today it’s not that different from the early days where you had some local programming mixed in with NBC programming through the day.”
PHOTOS: SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (LEFT); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (RIGHT)
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Today, nationally syndicated talk radio shows follow the Bill Meyer Show in a weekday lineup that features Rush Limbaugh, Lars Larson, Sean Hannity and others. Weekend programming includes local shows like the “Rogue Gardener” with Stan Mapolski and “Elevate Your Retirement” with Cathy Mendenhall, as well as programs like the “Conspiracy Show” with broadcast personality Richard Syrett. KMED’s early affiliation with the Mail Tribune brought Associated Press news and market reports to radio, but with the station’s 1937 NBC affiliation everything changed. Instead of the “Girls’ Whistling Chorus,” a performance by the students of the Medford Business College, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra graced the airwaves. And instead of the Medford-Milton game, “Amos and Andy,” “Hollywood Gossip” and Oregon State-Stanford football filled out the schedule. Angus Bowmer took “The Taming of the Shrew” to San Francisco in 1939, where it was heard in Medford, and in the 1950s, NBC would broadcast Oregon Shakespeare Festival performances from coast to coast. In 2003, Meyer says, he planted a flag in the ground and reinvented his show to an opinion-based talk radio format.
Bill Meyer, a talk show host at KMED in Medford, records a show in his studio.
“It was a trend, people wanted to hear an analysis of news, and they wanted to hear local opinion and to give their own,” Meyer says. “It was a way for people to give their own opinions and join in, and that was something we didn’t have in the old format.” Technology has transformed radio. Digital networks transmit programming once carried on phone lines, or on reel-to-reel and data tapes. Podcasts and archived shows allow time-shifting. Social media accelerates information and distorts news. Streaming services deliver to anyone with an Internet connection. The web has given Meyer and others, from bloggers to professionals, a global audience.
“The future of radio appears to be more and more the infinite dial,” Meyer says. What about KMED’s first home in the Sparta Building? The crushed velvet curtains, chinoiserie décor and piano are long gone, and the KMED of today has long outgrown the Sparta Building’s footprint. Oregon City developer Carl Coffman acquired the Sparta Building in 2011 and budgeted for a seismic retrofit, the installation of an elevator and restoration of the façade, as well as interior renovation and infrastructure improvements. Coffman believes in reuse, recycle and lives his philosophy by restoring structures and building small homes out of shipping containers. “It’s a pretty well-built building,” Coffman says. “The upstairs is basically the same as it was before, hallways down the middle, offices on both sides, and if you went in there today you’d see it pretty much the way it was.” “And there’s no evidence of radio towers on the roof, just where the grounding rod was attached in the basement,” Coffman says. “It probably saved the building by keeping the roof intact.” PHOTO: JAMIE LUSCH / MAIL TRIBUNE
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US Cellular Community Park is a major tourism draw for the Medford area.
One of the three “first” photographs of Crater Lake taken by Peter Britt in the fall of 1874. Britt’s photos would bring Crater Lake to the attention of William Gladstone Steel, who was instrumental in establishing the lake as a national park in 1902.
By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune
S
outhern Oregon has been a magnet for tourists ever since the New York Times described the region in 1873 as a beautiful lake region. And Peter Britt’s 1874 photos would bring Crater Lake to the attention of William Gladstone Steel, who was instrumental in establishing the lake as a national park in 1902. In the 1920s, Oregon’s growing highway system
TOURISM would simplify automobile travel and increase access to Southern Oregon. Auto courts popped up along the way, often not more than campsites with some common facilities. Roadside tourist attractions such as the Oregon Caves of Marble flourished, and in 1921, the Ashland Tidings reported that more than 10,000 cars had stopped in the city’s auto park since March 1, spending $54,000.
That same year the Consolidated Chamber of Commerce of Southern Oregon was formed to promote attractions across
Jackson, Josephine and Klamath counties. Today, Southern Oregon’s tourism industry is still growing.
PHOTOS: CITY OF MEDFORD (TOP); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (ABOVE)
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“We’re now a little over a billion dollars Oregon does, as well as country-to-couna year in visitor spending, and the area try and sister-park tourism agreements. continues to grow from 3% to 5% year “We’ve seen an increase in internaover year,” said Brad Niva, who heads up tional tourism, particularly from the Travel Southern Oregon. “We’re seeing Asian sector but not necessarily limited tourism continue to evolve and diversify.” to that. We’ve seen visitation gains Niva is data-driven and sees that from Europe and Latin America,” noted Southern Oregon’s booming wine Ackerman. “They certainly view Crater industry and spectacular outdoor oppor- Lake as a destination.” tunities are attracting more visitors. With snow that can reach 500 to 550 “If we can turn a one-night stay into a inches a season, Ackerman said, winter two-night or three-night stay, that’s eco- use of Crater Lake is expanding. The nomic development at its core, increasing park system is in discussions about spending in the area,” Niva explained. potential future winter lodgings, proba“On average our current overnight stay bly in Mazama Village, as weather is too is 1.9 nights per stay. When we package severe to keep the historic lodge open at things together, it’s to connect the dots the caldera. so people stay in the area Increasing year-round longer and spend more tourism and diversifying visitor dollars here.” tourism opportunities Conferences and spa also are goals of the resorts can increase Neuman Hotel Group, overnight stays, but which has properties in these facilities and Ashland and Medford, accommodations are according to Karolina limited in Southern Lavagnino, director of Oregon. Travel Southern sales and marketing. Oregon sees competitive “We are in active sports events as a new pursuit of new travelavenue to build tourism ers who find Southern to the benefit of local Oregon attractive,” said hotels and attractions. Lavagnino. “We show Owned and operated in our marketing how by the city of Medford, unique and diverse our US Cellular Community region is: for young famPark is one of the largest ilies, for mature visitors, municipal, lighted field for active travelers with systems in the United our trails, hiking and States. It now hosts basebiking, to Crater Lake ball, softball and soccer and waterfalls, throughKAROLINA LAVAGNINO, tournaments. According out the four seasons.” sales and marketing director, to Niva, the sports park The Neuman Hotel Neuman Hotel Group brings in over $10 million Group also creates in visitor spending every summer, which packages, destination events and speis why Travel Southern Oregon supports cial campaigns. Lavagnino has seen the the construction of a proposed Medford growth of the Oregon Chocolate Festival, Aquatic and Events Center. the Ashland Culinary Festival and Brine, “Half of the teams that participate Brew and Barrel, a new fermentation fescome in from out of the area to play in a tival in downtown Medford. tournament here in Medford, so we’re Coming full circle from the 1921 looking at growing that tournament founding of the Consolidated Chambusiness,” Niva explained. “It makes ber of Commerce of Southern Oregon sense that we’d build an indoor faciland a century of tourism, Ackerman ity that can host basketball, volleyball and Lavagnino both said they credit and pickle ball and swimming events Travel Southern Oregon for its work to and water polo and gymnastics. We are organize and promote the region as one centrally located, so teams from the Bay brand, with one voice. Area and Seattle can meet in the middle.” “Travel Southern Oregon has stepped Crater Lake continues to draw tourists it up so many levels, and they’ve develto Southern Oregon, increasing over the oped so many new tourism projects,” last 10 years from fewer than 500,000 to said Lavagnino. “There is excitement, around 750,000 people a year, according and they inspire all of us to work to Craig Ackerman, superintendent of together even though we are so diverse.” Crater Lake National Park. Reach Ashland writer Maureen Flanagan Ackerman sees a direct relationship between tourism and the work that Travel Battistella at mbattistellaor@gmail.com.
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By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
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Gary Hubler stands with recently harvested pears at his orchard near Coleman Creek Road in Phoenix in 2018.
hen was the last time you bought a pear, waited a few days for it to ripen, then, drooling with anticipation of its amazing flavor, let yourself bite into it, experiencing near culinary bliss? A century ago, in the 1920s, this was a common occurrence — and Southern Oregon’s famous pears were in demand worldwide, yet people still complained, “An apple is ready when you are; a pear is ready when it is.” That age-old quip is relayed by Rick Hilton, entomologist and faculty at the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center in Central Point. The fact is, Hilton adds, that people now have so many food choices, flown in from so many parts of the world — pineapples, bananas, wine, avocados, candy — that pears have slid down the chart, and orchards, for the last three decades, have been getting cut down, many to make way for wine grapes — and now hemp. “Demand for pears has not increased a lot. It’s because of foreign competition, especially from processed and concentrated fruits and canned pears,” says Hilton. “If you want instant gratification, you do not get a pear. You get a mandarin or apple, ready to eat when you buy it.” PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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The 1920s pear boom $1,000 an acre, an astoundwas greatly enabled by the ing amount of money at the invention of refrigerated time,” says Truwe. “So the railroad cars, which spread price of real estate went up, them all over the continent. up, up to the point where With new irrigation canals you couldn’t recoup your and reservoirs, the Rogue investment, so in 1912, Valley became the nucleus it toppled like a house of of the pear world. Blight cards. … By the ’20s, it was back East kept the fruit from a period of recovery, and growing as well there. it was the time when pear The valley became a trees came into production “niche pear district,” fosterand really started to boom.” ing locally discovered pear Today, the Rogue Valley mutations: a “well-russeted wine-growing region is the (bronze-colored) bosc variHillcrest Orchard workers spray pear trees for mildew control around 1920. southern-most of Oreety and, secondly, comice gon’s 19 federally approved pears.” These, Hilton notes, American Viticultural It was the farmers who lobbied for it.” thrived as adornments to Areas, according to the Rogue Valley In addition to water, rail and investHarry & David’s popular gift baskets. Winegrowers Association website. ment cash, the initial success of pears Hilton bemoans “pushed over” Established in 1991, the Rogue Valley here must be attributed to orchardist orchards he’s seen in recent years, on AVA encompasses nearly 1.15 million organizations, where growers “only let acres and includes the Applegate Valley South Stage, Fern Valley and Colver the best fruit out of the valley,” kept it roads, the latter turned into housing. AVA (established in 2001) and consists It was very prescient of the 1973 Leg- uniform and attractive, and developed of four main growing areas: the Bear a good system of packing, says Medislature and Gov. Tom McCall to pass Creek Valley, Valley of the Rogue, ford historian Ben Truwe. statewide land-use planning laws, or, Applegate Valley and Illinois Valley. “The Rogue Valley between 1904 says Ashland historian George Kramer, The region has about 180 vineyards and 1912 quadrupled its population, “The old orchards would all be condos growing more than 50 varieties on and real estate people seized on the fact roughly 4,000 acres producing nearly now. For all the flak statewide land that well-developed orchards, with the 10,000 tons of grapes. use laws have taken over the years, the original intent of the law was to protect best minds behind them, the scions of agricultural land from development. … wealthy Eastern families, were making PHOTO: COURTESY OF HILLCREST ORCHARD
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By Sarah Lemon for the Mail Tribune
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new gallery of historical photographs commemorates the Ashland Springs Hotel’s 95th birthday. And a summer open house to unveil the hotel’s mezzanine-level “history wall” offers just a glimpse of festivities for the hotel’s upcoming centennial. “The celebration of this historic hotel will be the celebration of Ashland, Oregon,” says hotelier Becky Neuman. A community-wide celebration of the hotel’s 100th birthday in 2025 likely will inspire other businesses to host their own Roaring ’20s or 100-themed events, says Neuman. Ashland Springs Hotel, the flagship property of Neuman Hotel Group, has founded several annual celebrations, including the Oregon Chocolate Festival, that other Ashland entrepreneurs also highlight, says Neuman. While specific plans have yet to emerge for the hotel’s centennial, Neuman promises it will be “so memorable and so unforgettable.”
The Ashland Springs Hotel, shown below as it looks today, opened in 1925 as the Lithia Springs Hotel (above).
The hotel’s grandeur was all but forgotten until Neuman and her husband, Doug Neuman, purchased it at a 1998 bankruptcy auction amid rumors that the once impressive edifice might become senior housing. A five-year renovation by a former owner to bring the nine-story structure into compliance with fire codes wasn’t enough to repair leaky ceilings and peeling plaster. Where so many others saw a money pit, the Neumans saw promise. “People would say, ‘Oh, Becky and Doug, our condolences,’ ” says Becky Neuman, recalling the hotel’s reputation as a “white elephant.” “We just had a different vision.” Nearly 20 years later, that vision couldn’t be clearer to Southern Oregon visitors and residents. After spending approximately $10 million to restore the Romanesque, Gothic and Neoclassical design, the Neumans reopened it Dec. 1, 2000. In subsequent years, the hotel has gained sister properties, including Ashland’s Lithia Springs Resort, Medford’s former Red Lion, rechristened Inn at the Commons, Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites, reinvigorated as an events center, and Jacksonville’s historical Nunan mansion.
PHOTOS: SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (ABOVE); JAMIE LUSCH / MAIL TRIBUNE (BELOW)
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But the “grande dame” holds a special place in the Neumans’ — and Ashlanders’ — hearts. “The aesthetics are just so glorious,” says Becky Neuman. “It takes you to another time.” The hotel’s new “history wall,” assembled with assistance from Southern Oregon Historical Society, will take guests back to Ashland’s heyday as a destination to nourish mind, body and spirit, with mineral-water cures and Chautauqua lectures, a popular educational movement of the early 20th century. The era’s optimism gave rise to “subscription hotels” commissioned by several other Oregon cities from the Portland architectural firm Tourtellotte and Hummel. Ashland’s is the only one remaining in operation as a hotel among Tourtellotte and Hummel landmarks in Grants Pass, North Bend, Astoria and Baker City. Rising 112 feet, the Lithia Springs Hotel was the tallest building between Portland and San Francisco when it opened in 1925, crowned by letters spelling out “Lithia Hotel,” as it was alternately known. Lofty hopes for the hotel were dashed a year later, however, when the passenger railroad changed its route to run through Klamath Falls instead of Ashland. The Lithian Hotel Co., a group of 10 Ashland businessmen, were broke in two years, foreshadowing the Great Depression. Although Ashland reclaimed some of its prominence, the hotel endured decades of hardship. Renamed the Mark Antony Motor Hotel in 1960, the structure was redecorated according to mid-century trends: drop ceilings that masked ornately carved beams, cheap carpeting covering marble mosaic floors, and Formica and chrome that replaced original accoutrements. An English Tudor theme was intended to evoke the growing popularity of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with new furnishings and a swimming pool. But by the 1970s, the hotel was known as a flophouse of cheap lodging and apartments as more and more tourists flocked to modern motels instead. “So many of those beautiful, historical properties are destroyed,” says Neuman.
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While some may consider the Mark Antony persona an ugly chapter in the hotel’s history, Neuman wanted to make sure the Ashland byword would get due credit. Realizing the history wall project had a dearth of Mark Antony photos, she and her staff sought assistance from SOHS and spent days researching at its Medford library. “They are just such a golden resource.” The result is an exhibit of at least 75 photos that illustrate the hotel’s original magnificence, its persistence in the face of adversity and its reemergence as a regional treasure. “I’m just so proud to be caring for her,” says Neuman. “She really does deserve it.” Doug and Becky Neuman purchased the Ashland Springs Hotel in 1998.
Reach freelance writer Sarah Lemon at thewholedish@gmail.com. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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By Ryan Pfeil Mail Tribune
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taffing a Southern Oregon fire lookout in the 1920s required an intimate understanding of the landscape — every trail, ridge and creek familiar and committed to memory. The job required more than simply watching and waiting for smoke to rise over the trees, says Cheryl Hill, author of the 2016 book “Fire Lookouts in Oregon.” The daily grind included recording lightning strikes and other weather-related data, repairs, periodic phone check-ins, and
sometimes making your way out to a fire, suppression tools in hand. “They were on their own,” Hill says. “If it got out of hand, they would have to call in for support.” At their peak, 849 of these structures dotted the high points of Oregon, their occupants searching for the sudden ghosts of smoke. A century removed, many in this network have been abandoned, with some burned down and some converted into high-altitude getaways that people can rent. “Fire lookouts became, over the
years, a real symbol of the mountain West,” says Jeff LaLande, historian and retired U.S. Forest Service archaeologist. “It became a symbol of the U.S. Forest Service’s earlier days.” The Forest Service, established in 1905, was given control of what were then called “forest reserves,” according to the Forest Service website. Forest reserves later became national forests. One of the Forest Service’s earliest jobs was snuffing out fires in the woods. The first years of this practice were relatively simple. SEE TOWERS, PAGE 26 PHOTO: OREGONLOOKOUTS.WEEBLY.COM
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FROM TOWERS, PAGE 24
“You’d see smoke off yonder, and you’d head for it with your tools,” LaLande says. “Shovel, ax, so forth. That was about as good as it got.” In 1910, drought-fueled fires, sparked by embers from coal-fired trains and lightning strikes, raged throughout the West and burned about 3 million acres, according to the Forest History Society. Close to 100 people died. “This was a catastrophic fire year,” LaLande says. The fires had a long-lasting influence on the Forest Service’s role in fire suppression, leading to “new fire prevention and suppression policies ... that still influence fire management around the world today,” the Forest History Society website says. The idea behind lookouts was simple: Spot smoke earlier, alert the Forest Service through a primitive phone, send them to put it out. “Their job was to look for the smoke, try and get a fix on its location, meaning its township and range and section, and then dispatch people there,” LaLande says. The first lookouts were typically built on rocky hilltops, while some others had a similar setup to tree houses, with ladder rungs built right into the tree that led up to a crow’s nest, of sorts, in the canopy. “You had to have a pretty hearty individual to get up on those things,” said Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Brian Ballou. “Even back in those days.” The lookouts got more sophisticated. By 1917, the Forest Service had standardized plans for lookout structures, LaLande says. The materials came pre-cut, with building instructions, the pieces transported by mule to their sites. “It was quite a job, and it might take all summer,” LaLande says. “But these were being built, by 1917, all over the Northwest, and all over the West. That’s when you had your first standard lookouts.” Many of these lookouts were built in the “cupola” style: a square floor plan with a living quarters on the main floor. A ladder would lead up to a small observation space in the upper story. Windows dotted the space, and a sighting device called an Osborne Firefinder was used to pinpoint a fire’s location. Staffers lived on site for the summer. Mules and horses brought them food, but water was a bit trickier. Lookouts
wore a pack that contained a big canister and hiked to a spring to fill it, making the hike back up to the tower considerably tougher. Cooking involved a lot of canned goods. Empty cans were commonly tossed over the mountain side. “A lot of the old lookouts are gone, but the can dumps are still there scattered down along the slope,” LaLande says. Herschberger Mountain and Dutchman Peak lookouts, on Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest lands, were erected in 1925 and 1927 respectively. The Oregon Department of Forestry started to build their own, too, many on private land. “Time was pretty important, and one
Herschberger Lookout sits at 6,200 feet on top of rocky Herschberger Peak in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. Built in 1925, the 12-square-foot cupola lookout is one of the last of that style in the Northwest.
of their ways to get a jump on the fires — so they believed — was to get the early detection, which is still a buzzword,” Ballou says. “That really snowballed through the ’20s.” The Civilian Conservation Corps was hard at work in national forests in the early ’30s, building roads and lookouts. “The Forest Service decided during that period that they wanted double coverage of every piece of the landscape,” LaLande says. “Meaning you have at least two different lookouts able to see a particular area.” By the 1960s, innovations in communication, better aircraft and developed road systems started a slow decline in the
use of lookouts. Some, like the Wagner Butte lookout, were burned down intentionally. Others were just left alone in high places as they started to wither away. “They’ve gone from this massive network. Now we have less than 200 in Oregon,” Hill says, adding that many of those aren’t staffed. But surveying the landscape for smoke pops has not gone by the wayside. The methodology has just seen a considerable change. As 2020 churns along, Oregon Department of Forestry officials in southwest Oregon are largely doing it from the air and remotely, thanks to a network of 22 cameras that dot high points across the region. ODF employees at the agency’s Central Point offices track all the action in real time, reporting smoke sightings to various agencies and responding as needed. The initial results of 2018’s infamous summer lightning storm that touched off one of the worst fire seasons in modern history were first spotted from a bank of computer monitors that show what the cameras see. In 1991, the Dutchman Peak Lookout was added to the National Register of Historic Places. As of 2018, 17 lookouts were available for camping rental. “There’s just a certain charm about these square-windowed cabins sitting on a mountaintop,” Hill says. “When you get up there, the views are incredible.” “The Squaw Peak fire lookout continues to receive makeover work from the Sand Mountain Society, according to Don Allen, the nonprofit’s spokesman. Plans include the replacement of bad shutters, restoration of the old shutter prop system, exterior wall rehabilitation, and construction of replica furniture and a replica outhouse, Allen said via email. Sand Mountain’s first project was the relocation and restoration of the Whisky Peak fire lookout back in 1989, Allen said. Ballou used to haul water and propane up mountainsides and do repairs at the lookouts when he worked in the Forest Service, before his transfer to ODF. “It was always just enjoyable to just go see a person up on a lookout and just kind of appreciate that spectacular view that they enjoyed every day,” Ballou says. “They knew the name of every canyon, every mountaintop, every creek. You don’t find that level of knowledge being used in that way anymore, and it’s kind of a wasted resource, in a way.” PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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A Timber Products employee drives a forklift past stacks of particleboard.
By Maureen Flanagan Battistella for the Mail Tribune
T
he timber industry has long been a source of wealth and industrial health in Southern Oregon, though it has gone through boom-andbust cycles over the past 100 years. In 1918, the town of Butte Falls anticipated great prosperity when the Brownlee-Olds Lumber Company bought out the assets of the Butte Falls Sugar Pine Lumber Company and started up its new Medford mill in 1922. And when James H. Owen bought up the Brownlee-Olds Lumber Company in 1924, he took over more than 50,000
acres of timberland and began planning for a rail line between Butte Falls and the Klamath Basin. That rail line would never be built, and the timber industry would rise and fall ... and rise again ... in the years to come. Timber harvests are calculated
in board feet, and according to the Oregon Department of Forestry, the largest recorded harvest was 709,247,000 board feet in 1955. Production volumes dropped over the years, and in 2013, the Oregon Forest Resources Institute reported that 78,728,000 board feet had been produced in Jackson County from a mix of federal, state and private lands. “The forest industry has evolved quite a bit,� explains Max Bennett, forestry and natural resources specialist at the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center in Central Point.
By 1927, Owens-Oregon Lumber Company was operating a new state-of-the-art mill outside of Medford and was the largest industrial taxpayer in Jackson County.
PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (TOP); COURTESY TRUWE.SOHS.COM (BOTTOM)
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Above: The Sugar Pine Company Cafe in Butte Falls recalls the glory days of the timber industry, when the Butte Falls Sugar Pine Lumber Company was dropping trees in the forests of Southern Oregon. Below: Medco Pond was built by The Medford Corporation, for many years the area’s largest lumber company. It ran rails through the woods, connected to a railroad between its Medford mill and Butte Falls.
Bennett says that while many of the sawmills have closed, other wood products manufacturers are active. “There are more secondary manufacturers now, not just processing saw logs,” says Bennett. “Mills are much more efficient and mechanized and high-tech, much more computerized; every part of a log is used for some product whether it’s turned into veneer, landscape products, particle board, chips or other secondary products.” There are 94 wood-products companies registered in Jackson County with the Oregon Forest Industry Directory, maintained by Oregon State University. The directory shows the range and diversity of today’s industry and also reflects how the timber industry has changed. Companies like Terry Neuenschwander Logging, Oaxaca Reforestation, New Horizons Woodwork, Biomass One, Homestead Log Homes, and Ron Hailicka’s Oregon West Lumber are registered along with Boise Cascade, Roseburg
Forest Products, Weyerhaeuser and the Gonyeas family’s Timber Products Company. Timber Products Company is a diversified wood-products company with land holdings, sawmills and secondary wood-product facilities. The company has been around Southern Oregon in one form or another for more than 100 years. Today, Timber Products owns nine manufacturing facilities, four of them in Southern Oregon, according to Marketing Director Chris Knowles.
“We’re really proud that we’re a 102-year-old family-owned company, and the Gonyeas family is still active in the business,” says Knowles. “For us, Southern Oregon is a great location with ties back to forestry sources that give us the ability to compete very well. “We do have plans to reinvest in our facilities and grow,” Knowles added. “We’re in Southern Oregon for the long haul.” Secondary manufacturing, reforestation and forest-management companies are finding new opportunities in the region. Medco closed its Medford mill in 1992, and today the property along Rossanley Drive is under development for mixed retail and light industrial. Butte Falls, home to more than 400 folks, still is solidly a timber town. It isn’t wealthy, but it has diversified, and looks to outdoor tourism and heritage interests as ways to build community. If you get a chance, make the drive to Butte Falls and stop at the Sugar Pine Company Café, say hey to Corey Hamman, and order up the Lumberman’s Special. Watch the trucks drive through town loaded with logs, then check out the Rail Car Museum and the Butte Falls Historical Society. See the foundations and raceways of the old mill on Big Butte Creek, then head to Medco Pond and catch a trout for supper. PHOTOS: MAUREEN BATTISTELLA
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“Today, the groups and contractors, organizations and companies are involved in fuels reduction and reducing fire risks,” Bennett says, “as well as more traditional timber harvesting on public and privately owned lots.” By 1927, Owens-Oregon Lumber Company was operating a new state-of-the-art mill outside of Medford and was the largest industrial taxpayer in Jackson County. The company employed 400 to 600 men and produced more than 60 million board feet a year, and Butte Falls was a thriving timber town. Not two years later, the Great Depression threw the construction and housing industries into a downward spiral, and Owens-Oregon was in foreclosure, along with dozens of other operators in the Pacific Northwest. The mill was shuttered in 1934. The Medford Corporation (Medco), a Delaware entity, filed paperwork at the Jackson County Courthouse in December 1932, and in 1935, it reopened the Owens-Oregon mill to the relief of workers, timber haulers and loggers. Medco was a major economic engine in Southern Oregon and flourished through the 1970s when economic downturns, changes in global timber requirements, changes in federal land-management and environmental interests all contributed to a reduced timber yield and production. And in the 1980s, a hostile takeover by Texas financier Harold Simmons resulted in clear-cuts over much of Medco’s acreage. Southern Oregon’s timber industry has changed significantly over time, not just in yield but in efficiency. “There’s mechanized harvest equipment that falls a designated tree, limbs it, bucks it and drops it on the ground for it to be picked up by a harvester. The work force is more technologically advanced, much safer, still dangerous but much safer and more sophisticated than it used to be,” Bennett says.
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Top: This photograph of the southern portion of the early Jackson County Fairgrounds was taken before 1929. Pacific Highway is at the left. Stewart Avenue crosses the railroad tracks in the upper left corner and Barnett Road parallels the line of trees crossing the top of the photograph. Middle: Rides light up the night sky at the Jackson County Fair in 2013. Bottom: Car races at the Jackson County Fair, likely taken in the 1920s.
By Tony Boom for the Mail Tribune
I
n 1922, the Jackson County Fairgrounds moved to a new location where the Gateway retail area now sits in south Medford. The location was popular, credited as a place to be seen and drawing in top race car drivers and machines to a 1.1-mile track. Today, the fairgrounds are located in Central Point, and are known as the Expo, which features a year-long series of events, including the annual county fair in July. Attendance at the fair and other events have made the Expo a self-supporting county operation that plans to continue its mission into the future. The next decade will be spent answering the questions, “What do our citizens and our region need from us?” said Expo Manager Helen Funk. That’s consistent with the Expo’s mission to provide a fiscally sound cultural, recreational, agricultural, commercial and educational opportunity for the citizens of Jackson County and the region. PHOTOS: SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (TOP, BOTTOM); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (MIDDLE)
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There are no plans for any new capital projects on the grounds, said Funk. Those could come if partners are involved. The adjacent, county-run RV park is an example of such a partnership. “When you run a 245-acre campus, buildings, barns and lights, without a major million-dollar gift, you are not going to be building a lot,” said Funk. Capital renovations will take place, among them replacing the roof on the Southern Oregon Event Center, said Funk. But she will need to secure funds for that. In addition, the Padgham Arena will be refurbished and renamed. Programming and events will largely be determined by public demand and by those who would rent the facility. A small fair staff do organize the fair and have run recent concerts by country artists Old Dominion and Josh Turner. This January’s Bacon and Barrels, a first-time production, was organized by fair staff and will be repeated next year. “We’d love to do more concerts,” said Funk. A return of events such as the four-day County Crossings in 2017-18 could happen if a promoter came along. “An unintended consequence of County Crossings is we got to show off what our venue could do for country events,” said Funk, leading to interest from concert organizers.
Soappy Smith leaps over a hurdle during the All-Alaskan Racing pigs event at the Jackson County Fair in 2011.
“We are better at being an event host that rents out the Expo,” said Funk. “We want to rent so others can grow their businesses, try their own event growing.” “The Expo hosted over 300 events last year and is on track to do the same this year,” said Rob Holmbeck, who heads community development. Events range from the fair, a rodeo and concerts to car and RV sales, trade shows and dog agility trials, spa sales and stock shows. “We are always looking for new and exciting things to bring into the event centers,” said Holmbeck. A monster truck competition is held, and motocross events would be a possible addition. Excitement was part of the menu at the
former south Medford location. “The 1920s before the Great Depression were the fair’s heydays — and the place to be seen by the well-dressed during the Roaring ’20s,” Ashland historian Dennis Powers wrote in an article on the fair’s history and development. Jackson County and the city of Medford in 1922 purchased the site, which also contained the Newell Barber Airfield, planning to move the fair from its previous location south of Oakdale. A levy in 1921 for an improved fairgrounds carried by 361 votes, with 1,552 voting yes and 1,196 voting no, research by historian Bill Miller shows. While apparently popular with the public, the new fairgrounds never had a successful financial year, Miller’s research found. Famous race driver Barney Oldfield appeared at the 1.1-mile track, and there was a half-mile horse racing track inside the car oval, with grandstands facing east just off Highway 99 in the area where Walmart stands today. By 1932, the Depression brought a hiatus, and fairs were held irregularly after that, said Miller. Some fairgrounds became federal property. In 1974, the county opened the new fairgrounds at the current site off I-5 in Central Point. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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In June 2018, the FAA upgraded the airport from a non-hub airport to a small-hub airport. Passenger increases are projected to keep rising, and the airport will address that and other needs.
By Ryan Pfeil Mail Tribune
O
n the morning of April 3, 1929, the landslide results of a Medford bond election for a new airport was trumpeted on the Mail Tribune’s front page. Of the 2,425 votes cast — “the heaviest vote in the history of bond elections in this city” — 2,243 voted yes. No votes totaled 182. Eighteen months later, the city was ready for the new facility’s official dedication. “Prosperity will come to the city that is ‘air-minded,’ ” stated an ad announcing the dedication. “Aviation will play an important part in the future, and with the building of a fine airport, Medford has established herself as an important air center on the skyways of the Pacific Coast.” Ninety years after that dedication, the Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport has grown into a multi-terminal facility that for the last two years has served more than 1 million passengers a year, an astronomical jump from the hundreds recorded in Newell
Travelers go through the TSA inspection line before boarding flights at the Medford airport.
Barber Field’s first year. Medford established the first airfield in Oregon in 1922 next to the Jackson County Fairgrounds in south Medford, acting in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service, which used the field as a landing place for fire-spotting planes operating in Southern Oregon. In 1926, the Pacific Coast air mail route was established by the Pacific Air Transport Company, and Medford was selected as one of the stops on that route.
By 1927, city leaders realized the airport was too small, setting the stage for the 1929 bond issue and a new airport at the current location off Biddle Road. Aircraft used by wildland firefighters and emergency personnel still are stationed at the airport, and mail still arrives via airplane, though the U.S. Postal Service is now joined by shipping businesses like UPS and FedEx. More growth is on the horizon, too. Airport Director Jerry Brienza said the
facility is in the process of putting together a master plan. “In that master plan, we’ve already identified that in the next 20 years, our passenger traffic will probably double,” Brienza said. “Let’s say we’re doing 1 million passengers today. We’ll be doing 2 million in the next 20 years. That’s what we’re anticipating.” Aircraft first became visible over the Rogue Valley in the early 1900s. Eugene Ely, credited in the National Aviation Hall of Fame as the first pilot to make a successful unassisted takeoff and landing from a U.S. Navy ship, was the first pilot to see the Rogue Valley from an airplane cockpit. In 1919, two men brought a plane to the area that took some of the area’s first passengers into the sky. Floyd Hart and Seely Hall purchased a Curtiss Jenny biplane in July 1919, flying it from Sacramento, making three stops along the way and passing over the Siskiyou Mountains, said Shady Cove historian Bill Miller.
PHOTOS: AVIATIONPROS.COM (TOP); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (CENTER)
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“It took a lot of guts to do that kind of flying,” Miller said. “You’re looking at a moment where aviation is starting to take off. Aviation was a hot topic.” Medford’s first dedicated airfield, Newell Barber Field, was named for a World War I pilot who died flying a mission over France. Its runway was about 25 feet wide and 1,500 feet long. “I am convinced more than ever that the Oregon aerial fire control will play an important part in saving the state thousands of dollars’ worth of valuable timber,” a forester said in a 1919 Mail Tribune story about the Forest Service using planes to detect forest fires. A few years later, the facility became an airmail hub when Vern Gorst, who organized Pacific Air Transport, landed a government airmail contract for the Los Angeles-Seattle route. The first mail plane landed in the city Sept. 15, 1926. By 1928, the airfield was being lengthened and widened, but its location, sandwiched between Bear Creek and the Jackson County Fairgrounds, made further expansion impossible. “They just wanted an airport that could handle more passenger traffic,” Miller said. “They saw that’s where everything was going.” The new airport, dedicated Aug. 4, 1930, featured a 2.55-million candlepower beacon, radio station and weather bureau. Oregon Governor A.W. Norblad, a keynote speaker at the airport’s dedication, told the crowd that air travel was the way of the future. The U.S. Army Air Corps used the airport for summer encampments in the late 1930s, and federal funds obtained in
Passengers unload from a flight that landed at the Medford airport. The airport saw more than a million passengers a year the past two years.
the early 1940s were used to improve the airport runway and taxiways, and add 118 acres of land. The U.S. War Department took control of the airport during WWII, deeding acquired acreage and easements to the city of Medford in 1948. Mercy Flights, a nonprofit air ambulance, came along in 1949. Medford air traffic controller George Milligan founded the nonprofit after his friend died of polio. Its headquarters remain on airport grounds. Firefighting aircraft are housed at the airport during fire season, while staff have a year-round presence. “It becomes a little beehive about four months out of the year here,” Brienza said. “Especially if they find an active fire. We have aircraft coming throughout the United States. We even handle the very heavy equipment here.” That heavy equipment includes 727s
and a 747 Super Tanker, Brienza added, a significant upgrade from the buzzing biplanes that first took to the air to search for smoke pops. The Super Tanker isn’t based here, but the airport is looking to change that and have it here year-round. Space is the main constraint, but Brienza hopes that will change. In February, the airport acquired about 38 acres on the east side of the facility, bringing its footprint close to 900 acres. The land is outside the fence line; what it will be used for is up in the air. “We have a substantial amount of property on the east side of our airport, and we have a substantial ramp over there already that the Forest Service works off of,” Brienza said. “But if we really want the Super Tanker to be based here, that ramp would probably have to be expanded by about three times the size it is. We have the property to do that, we just don’t have the funds to do it right now. We’re working that way.” In June 2018, the FAA upgraded the airport from a non-hub airport to a small-hub airport. The upgrade is based on annual passenger counts, according to the FAA website. Passenger increases are projected to keep rising, and the airport’s master plan will address that and other needs, Brienza said. “Right now, we’re all out of hangar space to put these guys, so we’ve got a waiting list of people that want to bring their aircraft to the airport, but we’re having to turn them away. That’s never a good thing,” Brienza said. “We have a lot of flat land that we can develop on, but there’s no taxiway or infrastructure going over to them. So we are looking in the next few years to start developing those areas,” he said.
PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (TOP); JACKSONCOUNTY.ORG (BOTTOM)
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A new heating and air conditioning unit is lifted to the roof of the Holly Theater (above), while inside, portable lights illuminate work being done (left) as the restoration effort continues.
By Damian Mann Mail Tribune
A
t a time when the world had plunged into the Great Depression and Jackson County was rocked by a wild political scandal, the Holly Theatre came to life. Construction of the theater had barely started when Black Friday hit Oct. 29, 1929, marking a massive drop in the stock market and the start of an economic downturn that lasted more than a decade. “I do think there was a pause and reevaluation,” said George Kramer, a local historian who has been working on the current remodel of the theater. “At the end of the day, they had faith in the community. They decided, to their credit, to go forward with this massive project.” Eric Fehl, a local contractor and controversial political figure who got caught up in an infamous Jackson County rebellion, was the driving force behind the Holly, which was built
Organizers are still short of the money needed to finish remodeling the Holly Theatre.
for $300,000. The rebellion, known as the Good Government Congress, was a rural populist effort that supported a dictatorship to bring the country out of the Great Depression, according to an article by Jeff LaLande in the Oregon Historical Quarterly of winter 1994-95. Fehl and other local investors temporarily stopped work on the Holly over concerns about the Depression’s
impact on the theater, but work resumed in March 1930, and the theater opened Aug. 29, 1930. “The Holly was unusual in that it was totally funded locally,” Kramer said. “Fehl had this long-time dream of building a movie theater in Medford.” Fehl thought big, creating what is still the largest theater in the region, originally featuring 1,200 seats. Financing for the project
came from locals Walter Levrette and John and Louis Niedermeyer. “It’s the biggest theater that has ever been built in Medford,” Kramer said. The theater portion of the Holly closed in 1986, and in December 2002 a broken roof truss forced tenants in the front office areas to move out temporarily. When it closed, the auditorium was largely gutted. After Jefferson Public Radio bought the building, the renovation appeared to get off to a good start in 2011 and 2012, when a facade restoration was completed. But a dispute between JPR and the Oregon University System intensified, leading to the 2012 ouster of former JPR executive director Ron Kramer, who had been with the station since 1974. George Kramer is Ron Kramer’s brother. PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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Construction of Medford’s Holly Theatre, shown here in 1948, was started in 1929.
Ruhl, wrote Feb. 21, 1933, that he was in favor of “a government of, for and by the people” as opposed to a “government of, for and by one man in it — L.A. Banks!” While Fehl will be forever remembered for his political downfall, he did leave behind the legacy of the Holly
and pushed ahead with its construction despite the economic headwinds of the Great Depression. “Fehl is not a particularly laudable character, but even people who do bad things sometimes do good things,” Kramer said. “The Holly was a good thing that he did.” The theater thrived through the Depression and into World War II, but the rise of multiplexes in the 1980s ultimately led to its closure. Jefferson Live!, a subsidiary of Jefferson Public Radio Foundation, plans to use the venue for musical acts. Kramer, who has been involved in historical renovations around the state, said people are interested in the history behind old buildings. “They like to believe a building’s either haunted, was a whorehouse or was a stage stop,” he said. Many have suggested the Holly might be haunted, but if it is haunted, it’s likely the ghost of Eric Fehl. PHOTO: SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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Originally, the cost for restoration was estimated at $4.3 million, but it has now swollen to more than $11 million. Holly supporters are still shy of their fundraising target, so it’s difficult to say when the theater might actually reopen, though renovation of the front portion of the building has been completed. Fehl, the man behind the Holly, was a colorful character who is known more for his involvement in the Good Government Congress, which was popular among working-class residents. One of Fehl’s associates, Llewellyn Banks, wrote a column titled “Once in a While” for the Daily News, a competitor to the Mail Tribune at the time. Banks blamed the region’s economic troubles on villains such as the Federal Reserve and the “corrupt courthouse gang,” according to an account by LaLande in “The Oregon Encyclopedia,” a project of the Oregon Historical Society. Fehl joined Banks in denouncing what they perceived as the criminality of the “courthouse gang.” Fehl won a local judge election as a Good Government Congress candidate in 1932. Surrounded by a band of local toughies known as the Green Springs Mountain Boys, Fehl and Banks held a rally on the Jackson County Courthouse lawn to celebrate their electoral takeover, while complaints of irregularities in the ballot count from rural areas led to a state-ordered recount. State officials discovered that ballots had been stolen from the courthouse vault, while other ballots were burned in the courthouse furnace. More ballots were discovered weighted down and tossed from a bridge into the Rogue River. Banks, Fehl, the new sheriff and other Good Government Congress leaders were indicted for theft and conspiracy to commit criminal syndication. When Oregon State Police arrived at Banks’ Medford home to arrest him, he shot and killed a constable who tried to serve the warrant. Fehl was sent to the state penitentiary for the theft, and Banks received a life sentence for murder. The Mail Tribune’s editorials on the Jackson County Rebellion netted the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 1934. The publisher at the time, Robert
4/14/2020 4:55:33 PM
Chandler Egan putts during his quarterfinal match at the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach.
By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
A
Longtime head professional Jim Wise kneels next to a plaque dedicated to him at Rogue Valley Country Club in 2008.
lot of the Rogue Valley’s pear barons were rich young men from Ivy League colleges whose parents realized they needed something to do, so they bought acres in Southern Oregon and sent their sons here to grow pears. One of them was the now-legendary Chandler Egan, son of a wealthy Chicago dentist whose dad in 1911 bought him 115 acres of prime land east of Medford, says Ashland historian George Kramer. Egan, who won the U.S. Amateur golf tournament two years in a row in 1904 and 1905 (a feat equaled eight times since; most recently by Tiger Woods, who won three straight), landed here among a “colony” of similar lads, tried his hand at the orchard thing, but, says Kramer, “realized he was 300 miles from the nearest golf (in Portland), so he promptly cut down the pear trees and taught himself to be a golf course architect.”
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF THE EVERETT FAMILY COLLECTION (TOP); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (CENTER)
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Such were the beginnings of the Rogue Valley Golf & Country Club, whose first nine holes by Egan opened in 1924. Another nine, also engineered by Egan, opened soon and evolved into the present Rogue Valley Country Club. Half a dozen courses have evolved here in the last century, but Egan’s is something classic and special, says Jim Wise, who was a pro there for 40 years until his retirement in 2012. “It’s the traditional, classic, old style, with small greens, narrow fairways,” says Wise. “I’ve played it a long time, and I never get tired of it. It’s a little tough, very aesthetic, yet anyone can play it, no matter their age or skill level. I still play three times a week and enjoy playing it with friends.” Egan, an Olympic gold medalist in golf and multiple winner in the 1920s of the Pacific Northwest Amateur,
Casey King hits from the sand during the final day of the Southern Oregon Golf Championships at Rogue Valley Country Club in 2009.
went on to design courses at country clubs in Portland, Eugene, Lake Oswego, Hood River, Tualatin and Klamath Falls, and in Arcata and Millbrae in California. He even designed the legendary 18th hole at Pebble Beach. He was “incredibly wellknown in life, a really big deal,” says Kramer. Egan and his wife built a home on Foothill Road in Medford that still stands. He died of
pneumonia at 51 in 1936, with funeral and burial in Medford. Golf legend Bobby Jones attended. Then, golf was expensive, a sport of the upper middle-class and wealthy, says Wise, one that had its own dress fashion — including, for men, the “plus four” knickers that came four inches below the knee and “kept your long socks dirty and your pants clean.” But today, the RVCC
code only requires shirts with a collar. The beautiful thing about the game, says Wise, “it’s the only game where you impose penalties on yourself. You have to have the ability to meet and greet people. You play with honest, hard-working people. It’s a very honest game, very character building, where over 90 percent of your penalties are imposed by you.” The club fell on hard times in the Depression, and majority interest was bought by local magnate Glenn Jackson, who fashioned it as a “working man’s private club,” and held that interest until his death in 1980, according to the RVCC website. It hosted the Oregon Amateur in many decades of the late 20th century. The Southern Oregon Golf Championship has been held there almost every year of the last 90 years. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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4/14/2020 3:27:35 PM
HEALTH CARE
By Maureen Flanagan Battistella
A postcard from 1922 depicts Sacred Heart Hospital in Medford.
for the Mail Tribune
T
he health care sector is Southern Oregon’s largest employer, and both Providence Medford Medical Center and Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center are poised for growth to meet the demand. “Health care is the No. 1 industry in our region,” said Colleen Padilla, executive director of Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development. “In the current forecast period for 2020-2027, health care is projected to be the fastest-growing industry in the Rogue Valley, and we’ve seen that over the last 20 years as well,” said Guy Tauer, regional economist with the Oregon Department of Employment. “The sector tends to grow with population and demographic trends.” The Oregon Department of Employment has projected an 18% increase in health
care and social assistance jobs by 2027, bringing the number of Jackson County jobs in this sector to 24,610. Over the last century, hospitals in Medford and Ashland have leapfrogged
The early records of Providence Hospital in Medford were handwritten in French.
each other to build facilities and deliver health care. Each time, construction campaigns have asked for public and private contributions. Ashland was the first to have a purpose-built hospital — the Granite City Hospital was constructed on Siskiyou Boulevard in 1910, completed just a year after the FordyceRoper home burned, a building earlier converted to use for the sick. By 1910, the pear industry was exploding and so was Southern Oregon’s population. Medford physicians would have been reluctant to send their patients to Ashland, where the Granite City Hospital advertised that it was the most modernly equipped hospital between Sacramento
and Portland. But Ashland’s hospital primacy was short-lived, because by 1912, Medford’s community raised $150,000 to build Sacred Heart Hospital run by the Sisters of Charity of Providence. Sacred Heart Hospital was the only hospital in town until Medford Community Hospital opened in September 1922 at 843 E. Main St. At the same time, Jesse Winburn bought up Ashland’s Granite City Hospital and made it a gift to the community. “It will be neither a Methodist nor a Presbyterian institution, and will also be minus the designation of any saintly patronymic, both Jew and Gentile being welcome within its walls,” the Tidings reported. PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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Medford Community Hospital expanded again in 1925 with a $20,000 community investment and boasted a full surgical suite, lab and X-ray equipment and obstetrical services. Capitalizing on its location and physical facilities, Medford Community Hospital’s advertising cited its cool, clean and airy rooms with scientifically prepared food and hospitable atmosphere. The hospital cited its on-staff nutritionist in 1925 advertising. Advancements in medicine and technology have meant that over the years hospitals have needed more manpower, more highly trained workers and different kinds of health professionals. Today, the Oregon Department of Employment tracks more than 40 types of health care workers. Registered nurses, medical secretaries and medical assistants made up 45% of the health care workforce in 2018, with a median hourly wage of $41.62 for registered nurses, $16.52 for medical secretaries and $17.91 for medical assistants. ODE reports that in 2018 pharmacists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants earned the highest median hourly wage at $67.58, $57.88 and $56.41 respectively. By the 1950s, both of Medford’s hospitals were aging and running out of space. The Hill Burton Act brought funds to the table and Medford rallied again. Medford Community Hospital was renamed Rogue Valley Memorial Hospital, and in 1958 at a cost of $1.2 million, constructed new facilities at Barnett and Murphy, its current location.
Construction crews work on a new parking structure at Rogue Regional Medical Center in February. The hospital announced plans this year for a $1 billion expansion at its facilities in Medford, Ashland and Grants Pass.
The sewers, water lines and power needed for the hospital opened up Medford’s east side of town for residential and commercial development, and in 1961 the first facilities of Rogue Valley Manor opened to the public. In 1964, Sacred Heart Hospital celebrated renovation, new construction and expansion at 1111 Crater Lake Highway in Medford and reopened its doors as Providence Hospital. The new hospital cost $2.123 million. Today, Providence Medford Medical Center has 168 beds, with services ranging from emergency medicine, stroke care, cardiac and vascular care, a birth center, total joint replacement services, spine health program, pain management, comprehensive rehabilitation services and robotic surgery. Twenty-one clinics and 114
Stewart Meadows Medical Center, at the corner of Stewart Avenue and South Pacific Highway, is part of Providence Medford Medical Center’s expansion.
providers are affiliated with Providence Medical Group, and the medical center’s latest bricks-and-mortar addition is Providence Stewart Meadows Medical Plaza on Riverside Drive in Medford. In 2012, Rogue Valley Medical Center was rebranded as Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center, and in 2020 it announced a $1 billion investment in new construction and renovation projects in Jackson and Josephine counties over a 10-year period. The largest project is an expansion of RRMC in Medford, increasing patient beds, services and enlarging the emergency room. In addition, a $64 million project called Asante Forward will fund an 80,000-square-foot building that will bring outpatient cancer services, imaging, radiation, chemotherapy and more into one location, making treatment easier for patients and caregivers. Clinics for bone marrow transplants, gynecologic oncology, space for support groups and educational programs and telemedicine are also planned. “As our population has aged with its large cohort of baby boomers, and as our population grows, we require more health care services, and that growth has helped boost economic output and the health care industry,” Tauer notes. “If you look at the downturns we’ve had in our economy, health care has tended to be immune from those business cycles’ ebb and flow; it’s recession resistant.” Reach Ashland writer Maureen Flanagan Battistella at mbattistellaor@gmail.com. PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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4/14/2020 3:27:43 PM
By Kaylee Tornay Mail Tribune
L
E.H. HE
DRICK
eaving a legacy can look like a lot of things: having a building named after you; leaving your mark on the organization you work for; maybe even inspiring your descendants to follow your example in life. Just under 100 years since he became superintendent of the Medford School District, it’s safe to say that E.H. Hedrick covKids Unlimited ered all those Principal Jani bases. Hale stands “He had an outside Hedrick amazing work Middle School, ethic,” said Jani named for her Hale, principal grandfather, of Kids UnlimE.H. Hedrick ited Academy (inset photo), who served as in Medford. Medford Schools She’s headed Superintendent the public K-8 from 1925-1955. charter school, which has gained national attention for its support of traditionally underserved students, since November of 2016. E.H. Hedrick, who died in 1963, was her grandfather. “I think I inherited that (work ethic) from my grandfather, and my grandmother — and a vision,” Hale said. “A vision for what can be.” Hale remembers a time when she was 4, and her grandfather took her into the construction site where the school district’s first junior high school was slowly rising. “He was in heaven when he could be a part of that work,” she said. In 1955, that very school would be named after the man to whose overalls Hale clung as a small child, gazing up at the beams and studs of the structure in progress. Today, Hedrick Middle School remains a bustling campus of about 1,000 students.
PHOTOS: DENISE BARATTA, FOR THE MAIL TRIBUNE (LEFT); SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (INSET)
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Hedrick was mostly known for his 30 years at the helm of Jackson County’s largest school district. Before that, he was superintendent of Central Point School District. Raised in Drain in Douglas County, Hedrick knew Oregon well. And as someone who placed relationships at the heart of his leadership strategy, Hale said, he knew Oregonians even better. When Hedrick became superintendent in 1925, the entire population of Medford — about 12,000 people — was smaller than the school districts’ student body in 2020: about 14,000 students. His 30-year stint in the top spot in Medford is considered notable foremost for the fact that voters passed every one of the bond measures that the school district went out for during that time. “They say you can always measure a superintendent’s value by whether they can get a bond passed,” Hale said. By the time Hedrick retired in 1955, Medford School District had grown by even more than its additional campuses. It also had a high school football team — one of the best in the state. On the roster in 1928 — one of the Tigers’ best years up to that time — was a name that would one day be familiar in households across the state and nation: Bill Bowerman.
A World Away from the Every Day!
In 1999, Bowerman recalled his first interaction with Hedrick in an interview with the Mail Tribune. Bowerman had gotten in trouble for cutting class and had to go sit outside the superintendent’s office waiting for his meeting. “Then I heard a voice from the innersanctum: ‘Is that hell-raising kid still out there?’” Bowerman said. “I’m sure my ears were waving like a donkey. Then he told Mrs. Jensen to send the little so-and-so in. I had never heard a school teacher talk like that.” Hale remembered a stronger-worded request — to “send the little bastard in.” “He dressed me down for what seemed to be a half-hour. It probably wasn’t two minutes,” Bowerman said. Then, “he told me to get back to school and he didn’t want to hear any more about cutting up.” Hedrick was married to his wife, Helen, from 1923 until his death in 1963. She later remarried, to renowned book publisher Alfred Knopf, Hale said. E.H. and Helen had four children, three of whom worked in education for at least part of their careers. Eva, Hale’s mother, did not. “I was the least likely of the grandchildren to become involved in education,” she said.
That was exacerbated by other circumstances, including a teen pregnancy that, at that time, barred her from attending school. She dropped out, married the father of her expected child, and the two moved to a military base in Germany. “As a teenager I was definitely not a student,” Hale said. “I was not your take-home-to-mother type of friend.” Fast forward through another child, a tenacious re-entry into education in her 20s, and an eventual pivot to a career as an English teacher, followed by administrative positions in Medford and Phoenix-Talent school districts. Hale made an attempt at retirement, but now you’ll find her still working full-time as Kids Unlimited Academy’s principal. She swears that one day she will get retirement right. Hale, too, has left her mark on students and staff in each place she has worked, whether raising graduation rates among her school’s underserved students or even coaching state-level tennis players when she’d never played the sport before. Vision like what her grandfather carried, she said, is the key to bringing about change for the better. “He was an amazing person,” she said. “I love that his vision was not hampered by cynicism.”
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4/14/2020 3:28:34 PM
By Nick Morgan Mail Tribune
S
outhern Oregon University has weathered shutdowns, funding crunches and 10 name changes since its beginnings in the 1870s, but the ’20s — both the 1920s and the 2020s — are among the university’s most pivotal decades. The 1920s was when Ashland’s college campus sprang to life after a decade and a half absence. At the dawn of the 2020s, the university is balancing plans to be the “university for the future” while adapting that same campus to a rapidly changing world. Spring 2020 will long be remembered as the term when SOU and its 6,000 students went virtual, but according to SOU spokesman Joe Mosley, it’s hardly the university’s first wave of change. Mosley said the university traces its roots to a private prep school known as Ashland Academy, which was founded by the Ashland Methodist Episcopal Church in 1872. The school struggled with funding almost immediately. Within six years, the institution became the Ashland Academy and Commercial College, and by the next decade had become a “Normal School” — an official teacher’s college authorized by the state. That state authorization didn’t come with any added funding, and the college shuttered its doors for the first time from 1890 to 1895.
SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY
In 1950, students and faculty from Southern Oregon University turned out to move the library collection from Churchill Hall to the new library building. PHOTO: COURTESY OF SOU
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History repeated itself more dramatically in 1909, when another funding crisis closed Southern Oregon State Normal School for more than a decade and a half. In the summer of 1926, after a 17-year hiatus, Southern Oregon State Normal School returned with a lasting symbol of its rebirth. “The city of Ashland donated 24 acres of land on the site of current-day SOU, and the first building on the new campus — Churchill Hall, named for the school’s president, Julius A. Churchill — was built at a cost of $175,000,” Mosley said in a presentation to the Ashland Chamber of Commerce last fall. The Renaissance-style building was designed by architects John Bennes and Harry Herzog, according to University of Oregon Libraries archives. The university’s oldest building is still standing strong thanks to a $6.4 million renovation in 2012 that stripped the building to its frame and reinforced its structure with steel columns. At the dawn of the 2020s, Southern Oregon University has blossomed into an institution that serves 6,000 students pursuing far broader interests than just teaching. Mosley said the university’s nearly 90 bachelor’s degree, graduate and
Southern Oregon University’s 86-year-old Churchill Hall, the oldest building on campus, is being remodeled to meet earthquake standards. It is expected to be reoccupied beginning in early September.
certificate programs are “tailored to students’ interests and the needs of regional employers.” Among the programs tailored to the region are new programs for health care administration, outdoor adventure and expedition leadership, and digital cinema. Launched this year, the digital cinema program differs from traditional film schools by exposing students to all aspects of movie and television production. The university’s 175-acre campus is starting the decade with new additions, including this year’s completion of the new Lithia Motors Pavilion and
Student Recreation Center and the university’s new theater building, which included a 4,500-square-foot addition for Jefferson Public Radio. Funding concerns are hardly a thing of the past, with state support for higher education in a “30-year period of decline,” Mosley said, but the university is working to adapt by preparing for the worst. “Looking ahead, SOU remains committed to student access and affordability, outstanding academic offerings and a distinguished record of service to its students, community and state,” Mosley said. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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Publication: Our Valley 2019 Run date: April 27 2019 0426_A_43_OV____.indd 43 Store: Medford - Grants Pass
OUR VALLEY | 43
4/14/2020 3:28:41 PM
Horses and jockeys make it out of the final turn during a race at Grants Pass Downs.
GRANTS PASS DOWNS By Tim Trower Mail Tribune
T
here have been times over the roughly one century of horse racing in Grants Pass that the sport appeared to be on its last legs. Now, it flourishes well beyond the expectations of even the most ardent supporters at Grants Pass Downs, which staged its first commercial meet last fall and in 2020 looked forward to its most extensive schedule in history until COVID-19 concerns wiped out part of the slate. In late March, the track canceled what would have been its first spring meet, which was to run May 10 to June 8. Still, the times, they have changed. Commercial racing grew out of the closure of Portland Meadows, the state’s largest and busiest track since it opened in 1946. The 64-acre facility was sold last year, and in February
2020 was demolished to make way for a freight operation. With nowhere else to go, horsemen turned to Grants Pass, which annually ran a summer meet and enjoyed an uptick in interest and participation in the past half-dozen years. When the Portland track didn’t apply for a license in 2019, Grants Pass businessman Travis Boersma and his TMB Racing moved in and were granted 35 race dates per year through 2021 — as
well as simulcasting and off-track betting rights — horse racing stakes in Southern Oregon were considerably elevated. Boersma’s license application included major upgrades to the grandstands, concession stands, track and other areas. When GPD prepared for its 2019 summer meet, which was run by the Southern Oregon Horse Racing Association, Tag Wotherspoon, the track’s director of communications and marketing, marveled at the energy resonating throughout the grounds and the community. “You always experience that vibe when getting ready for the start of any season,” Wotherspoon said recently. “Last year it was different just because of what was happening with horse racing around the state of Oregon. There was a lot of positive momentum from the summer and it just carried over to our first commercial meet in the fall.” PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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A successful fall meet of 14 race days seeped into 2020, and another big step was taken with the announcement in March that Randy Evers, a much-respected industry veteran, had been named president of Grants Pass Downs. Evers was executive director of the Oregon Racing Commission from 2007-13 and had the same title with the Oregon Horsemen’s Benevolent Protective Association from 2013-19. Evers grew up with horse racing and attended meets throughout Oregon and the West. “There is great enthusiasm for the future of racing here in the local community, among the horsemen and across the industry,” Evers said in a statement. “Grants Pass Downs is well-positioned for long-term success, and we believe our vision will establish a sustainable growth model for racing’s future.” As Oregon’s only licensed horse racing venue, opportunity abounds, but that hasn’t always been the case. Since the county fair days of yore, there were periods when its existence grew fragile. In the early 1900s, Grants Pass staged an Irrigation and Industrial Fair, preceding a 1913 edict by the state of Oregon that each county would have one fair, and county fair boards would follow guidelines to operate them, according to the Josephine County Fairgrounds website. The location for the Josephine County Fair changed several times until the current Redwood Highway spot was purchased in 1927. Wotherspoon has been in his position since 2007 and has been associated with the track far longer. “Old-timers,” he said, spoke of horse racing gaining a foothold when it was included in the fair. “It was just so popular and evolved over the years,” he said. “The track was set up differently, as far as where it was and where the grandstand was, that type of thing.” Horse racing has been part of the fair since the 1920s, with only a few exceptions. From 1942-45, the fairgrounds were requisitioned for the World World II effort. In the early 1950s, the fair stopped
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sponsoring horse racing until a group of supporters, led by racing mogul Don Jackson, convinced it to reconsider. The SOHRA was formed in 1960, and Jackson was on its board. In a 2003 Mail Tribune article, the then-78-year-old Jackson noted that racing had been canceled only twice since the mid-1950s. One year it was replaced with singer Dennis Day; the other was in 1969, when a new grandstand was built. The track and industry were fortified when pari-mutuel betting was instituted in 1968. A few years later, the Daily Racing Form recognized GPD in its pages. In 1976, the county moved racing away from the August fair dates to earlier in the summer, freeing up space for each entity. “That was back in the days when
horse racing lost tens of thousands of dollars in 2011 and ’12. The SOHRA stepped up in 2013 to run the meet. It leased the racing facility for three months at $6,000 per month, drummed up business sponsors and used volunteers wherever possible. In the last seven years, said Wotherspoon, the races turned a profit all but once. By 2018, the meet averaged more than six horses per race for the first time in years. That was a precursor to the commercial boon last year. “With the future of racing and the fact that Grants Pass Downs has become the epicenter and hub of live racing in the state of Oregon,” said Wotherspoon, “we’re definitely very, very excited. “As Don Jackson used to say, ‘There’s excitement in the air.’” Construction Last year, in nine summer crews placed race dates under SOHRA, tons of soil on a daily average of nearly the racetrack 3,000 spectators attended. of Grants Pass The total handle was Downs to make $573,982, with $353,902 the track safer on-track and $220,080 for the horses off-track. and jockeys. The momentum carried over to the debut of the fall meet, which was held Sundays and Mondays for seven weeks, ending Nov. 4. About 25,000 fans were on hand for the 14 days and 123 races. county fairs were really big and horse A daily wagering record was set racing got popular,” said Wotherthe final day, bringing in a handle of spoon. “They had to separate live horse $131,332. The bulk of that total, more racing from the county fair because than $100,000, was off-track betting. both of them got too big.” The average field size, with owners In the 2003 article, Jackson and trainers coming from throughout elaborated: the West, climbed over seven per race. “We had women and baby buggies Grants Pass’ 2020 schedule was to going across the infield to get to their feature spring, summer and fall meets. cars,” he said. “We had to work the With the cancellation of the first track to get traffic back and forth to the segment, racing debuts Saturdays and highway between races. Traffic was Sundays from June 20 to July 12. The backed up all the way to the Caveman fall meet will be Sept. 20 to Nov. 9. bridge.” Improvements are still being made The meets ranged from about 15 to 25 to the facility, including widening the days in the years that followed, and the track to accommodate a larger starting gate, allowing fields of up to 10 horses, county and SOHRA either took turns and the installation of lights to allow running them or, occasionally, opertwilight racing. ated them jointly. “It’s just kind of amazing how it’s The fits-and-starts nature of the evolved through the years,” said business threw a big fit in the past decade. The fair showed a major short- Wotherspoon. fall and, with the county in charge, PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
4/14/2020 4:57:15 PM
By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
T
he economy of our valley a century ago was thriving on pear orchards and a housing construction boom, with plentiful jobs building Houses under construction at a Hayden Homes development off Ford Drive in Medford.
homes in a personal way, designed by local builders and architects, who would do one or two at a time — no sprawling, look-alike developments. That’s why, if you drive down East Main Street or Oakdale Avenue in Medford, each house is interestingly
crafted and still appealing to look at. Back in the 1920s, “No one built 60 houses. People didn’t move around like they do today. You kept your house. We didn’t have huge immigrations of retirees, as we do now,” says Ashland historian George Kramer.
HOUSING “There were no big-box stores, no national companies shipping in managers from Milwaukee. If you worked at Hubbard Hardware as a box boy, you could work your way up to manager over the decades.” So confident was our valley in the success of its sprawling orchards during the opening years of the 20th century that it went on a building spree — not just infrastructure and housing, but large buildings like the Medford Hotel and the Woolworth building. “There was a lot of work in orchards, and building houses for orchard workers and restaurants to feed them. Medford was the third-fastest growing city in the U.S. in the first decade of the 20th century.” But then came a local bust in 1912, driven by overplanting, speculation and drought, Kramer says. “You had empty buildings and houses, no jobs, nothing to do. People moved away,” he says. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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“It took a long time to stabilize, but it wasn’t full recovery until the early ’20s. It was similar to the 2005’06 bubble, fueled by stock speculation and smokeand-mirrors, and ultimately crashed. The Roaring ’20s were flush, but a false prosperity based on speculation. World War II bailed us out of that,” Kramer says. Housing remained reasonable and plentiful through the mid-20th century, taking an upturn in the ’80s recession and growing out of reach after the turn of the century. Oregon population doubled from 1970 to 2015, reaching the 4 million mark and automatically pushing demand. Those in the housing business paint a bleak picture, saying affordable housing is now in crisis all across the Pacific states, but more intense in our valley, which is uniquely positioned as a destination for California retirees bringing equity bucks from sale of their homes, which are priced well
New houses under construction near RoxyAnn Winery off East McAndrews Road in Medford.
above the Oregon market. With the loss of living wages from the fading timber industry, the Southern Oregon economy has shifted to lower-paying service jobs, so stagnant wages can’t meet the recommended 30 percent of income for housing. Land-use laws, initiated in
1973 to save farm and forest land, have shrunk available building land, so it’s much more expensive. The Great Recession of 2008 drove away many builders and skilled construction workers, and many still haven’t come back. The Jackson County Housing Authority, which creates up to 100 new affordable
units per year, reports that for families at half the area’s median income, our valley now needs 8,000 more housing units. “We’re not even making a dent in that,” says JCHA Executive Director Jason Elzy. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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4/14/2020 4:03:17 PM
Ku Klux Klan members march during an Ashland Fourth of July parade in the 1920s.
By Nick Morgan Mail Tribune
T Walter Pierce was elected Oregon governor in 1922 with the support of Ashland businessman Jesse Winburn and the Ku Klux Klan. Pierce was a racist and eugenics supporter. At the time, the Klan was growing in power across the state, and had drafted the overtly anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic Compulsory School Act. Pierce accepted the Klan’s endorsement and lent his support to the school bill.
he sight of hundreds of white hoods in downtown Ashland wasn’t always unwelcome in the 1920s. In fact, news reports of one Ku Klux Klan march through town late in the summer of 1924 went so far as to call the march “spectacular.” “Lit only by a burning cross on a nearby hill and a cross of electric lights pulled by an airplane, roughly 300 Klan members marched at the lead of Ashland’s Concert Band down Main Street Sept. 9, 1924,” according to an Ashland Tidings news report. While the organization swore in or “naturalized”
THE FIGHT AGAINST BIGOTRY new members, the Ladies of the Invisible Empire scooped ice cream for the townspeople. “Their ceremony was very spectacular, with the lights of the cross and the robes of the Klansmen,” the Daily Tidings wrote. In the 21st century, incidents of hate in the Rogue Valley — and the organizations backing them — appear to be of a different magnitude, but they’re hardly a thing of the past. At the dawn of the 2020s, the highest profile incidents stemmed from groups sometimes as small as one or two people.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF JOE PETERSON (TOP); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (BOTTOM)
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In 2017, Ashland police arrested one suspect for a rash of white nationalist flyers posted in downtown Ashland, while in 2019 two so-called Holocaust “skeptics” argued at a Medford public hearing that they were victims of discrimination, telling Oregon’s attorney general they “don’t feel safe here.” At the same hearing, members of Southern Oregon’s Jewish community told the attorney general about anti-Semitic graffiti that included “Anne Frank Oven” near an Ashland temple. Where Oregon’s Klan of the 1920s share common ground with the white supremacist organizations of the 2020s is that they both started small. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan tapped into xenophobic attitudes in the Rogue Valley to spread a message of hate that quickly amassed thousands across the state. In 1921, Klan Maj. Luther I. Powell swore-in Oregon’s first Klansmen, according to the Oregon Historical Society’s “Oregon Encyclopedia.” By 1923, Klan leaders claimed more than 35,000 members across Oregon, plus affiliated groups such as the Royal Riders of the Red Robe for foreign-born Protestants. By 1922, Klansmen had won election to local and county offices across the state, won seats in the state Legislature and helped pass an initiative requiring children to attend public schools — an initiative based on the Klan’s bias against Roman Catholics. “Most Oregonians did not join the Klan, but many supported its agenda, and others declined to challenge it,” the “Oregon Encyclopedia” states. “Members of some religious denominations and social and fraternal organizations, minority groups and a few politicians, including Republican Governor Ben Olcott, vigorously opposed it.” Resistance picked up steam against the Klan in 1922, following a series of violent Southern Oregon incidents that included two non-fatal lynching attempts. The Southern Oregon actions of the Klan’s violent “Night Riders” might have been tame compared to the Deep South, but violent all the same. The first incident involved a Medford piano salesman who had filed a $150 lawsuit against a Medford Klansman. The Klan kidnapped the man and took him to the woods for a “neck-tie party.” According to Mail Tribune reports, the violence was cut short when the salesman feigned a heart attack. Klan members drove him back to town injury free, ordered him to drop the suit and move out of town.
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Mickey’s malt liquor bottles, and a copy The Klan also targeted a black man of “The Goebbels Diaries,” written by who was a convicted bootlegger and Hitler’s second in command, among accused of being a chicken thief. He was other Nazi paraphernalia, according to hoisted by a rope and warned to live “the the U.S. District Court in Eugene. Moss straight and narrow path.” In 1923, the accused night riders were found innocent and Klausegger were sentenced to several years in prison. of extortion, riot and assault. According to a 2009 Mail Tribune Gov. Olcott fought against the Klan, report, Phoenix resident Andrew Lee but he ended up being defeated by a proKlan candidate, Democrat Walter Pierce. Patterson led the National Socialist Movement’s Oregon Unit after serving “If masked men are permitted to roam time for a string of racially motivated promiscuously at large it will not be long before our wives and daughters will know assaults in Medford police classified as hate crimes. Among those 2003 attacks no safety, our homes will no longer be were an attack on an East Indian motel our castles and the streets will be scenes of disgraceful riot,” Olcott wrote. “Those owner targeted because he was reportedly mistaken for an Arab American. practices must cease if there is to be law In March of 2019, locals submitted in our land and true Americanism is to correspondence prevail.” expressing conPierce was elected cern that Patterson Oregon governor was heading a in 1922 with the Gold Hill Neighsupport of Ashland borhood Watch businessman Jesse Program encourWinburn and the Ku aging residents to Klux Klan. Pierce “spot strangers was a racist and a who are acting eugenics supporter suspicious.” who accepted the In January 2017, Klan’s endorsement. Ashland police By the middle of arrested Justin the 1920s, the Klan Anthony Marbury disbanded in Oregon on misdemeanor — largely due to In 2018, racist fliers were left in sandwich criminal mischief political infighting bags with candy on driveways in Medford. charges surroundamong top members ing a wave of in the Portland area. fliers posted downtown with swastikas The Mail Tribune’s publisher at the promoting the hate group Cascadian time, Robert Ruhl, was among a handNationalist Resistance and phrases such ful of newspaper publishers who wrote as “A Storm is Coming,” according to an against the Klan, writing after the 1922 election that he hoped that in a “time not example posted by police at the time. In May of 2018, east Medford neighfar distant, the widespread report that Jackson County is a hotbed of Ku Kluxism borhoods reported KKK recruitment fliers with candies enclosed placed in can be finally and permanently denied, driveways, rallying anti-hate groups and Southern Oregon can regain her former well-deserved reputation of being such as the Racial Equity Coalition to act. “The recruitment materials state that one of the most united and progressive the KKK is ‘looking for like-minded men communities on the Pacific Coast.” and women from your area.’ We trust The Ku Klux Klan, however, has not that residents of the Rogue Valley will entirely disappeared from the valley. not be like-minded,” Racial Equity CoaIn the late 1990s, a KKK klavern in lition member Alma Rosa Alvarez wrote Grants Pass launching its own website. At the time, historian Jeff LaLande said it in an editorial responding to the fliers. “We trust that residents of the Rogue was unlikely the Grants Pass hate group had any direct lineage to the organization Valley can see beyond the sugar-coating most explicitly symbolized by the candy that grew to prominence in the 1920s. enclosed in the recruitment packets. We In May of 2008, a multiracial Medtrust that residents will value a society ford family woke in the middle of the that is inclusive of all people, regardless night to the letters “KKK” and a burning of race, ethnicity, national origin, lancross in their front yard. At the home of guage and religion.” the men behind the hate crime — Gary David Moss and Devan Klausegger — PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES police seized fireworks, gasoline, empty
4/14/2020 4:03:27 PM
Ginger Rogers headlined a benefit gala for the $5 million effort to restore the Craterian in 1993.
By Tammy Asnicar for the Mail Tribune
I
n 1926, 14-year-old Virginia Katherine McMath Rogers wowed the Craterian audience. A new dance was all the rage, and impresario George A. Hunt booked the newly crowned champion of Texas’ statewide Charleston Contest as part of a lineup of vaudeville acts intended to draw crowds to the sparkling new theater and usher Medford into the Jazz Age. On a four-month tour of the West, the dancing sensation from Fort Worth kicking up her heels was the star of “Ginger and the Redheads.” Although Rogers wasn’t the only person on the stage, the
THE CRATERIAN THEATRE Medford Mail Tribune reporter reviewing the performance had eyes only for the young lady the world would soon know as Ginger Rogers. He wrote in his April 21, 1926, story: “Miss Rogers is a winsome little miss with captivating mannerisms and a pair of feet that
The Rogue Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra rehearses at the modern-day Craterian Theatre in Medford.
make the most intricate dances seem easy.” Sixty-seven years later, Rogers was on the Craterian stage again — this time to save the aging movie house. In the midst of a decade-long fundraising campaign and restoration effort, Rogers’ appearance helped push the project to the finish line. Sadly, she died in 1995 at the age of 83, not living to see the Craterian restored to its former glory. The original Craterian — nicknamed “The Crate” — was a phoenix rising from the ashes. A 1923 blaze that destroyed the Page Theater, Medford’s biggest entertainment venue, prompted two businessmen, J.H. Cooley and Porter Neff, to finance
construction of a new theater on Central Avenue between Main and Ninth streets. They leased it to Hunt, a Midwesterner who had arrived in Medford in 1919. Hunt built excitement for the new theater by sponsoring a contest to name it. More than 1,500 entries were submitted. Mrs. W.P. Brooks won the $25 first prize inspired by nearby Crater Lake and playing off “Criterion,” a popular theater name in the Roaring ’20s. “Hunt’s Craterian” embellished a 29-foot sign outside the theater when it opened Oct. 20, 1924. Despite the extravagant $2.75 admission, a sell-out audience of nearly 1,200 attended the grand-opening gala.
PHOTOS: SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (ABOVE); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (BELOW)
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Designed by architect Frank Clark, the two-story stucco building featured a Spanish-colonial exterior and provided seating for 1,187 people (in a town of just 6,000). Four storefronts in the Craterian building opened onto Central Avenue, and law offices filled the second floor. Inside, the building reflected the opulence of the glitzy 1920s. Visitors entered through a tiled lobby and gasped at an interior inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Gold stencil work adorned the lobby, and vases of fresh flowers stood in the niches. In the auditorium, the ceiling towered 50 feet above the stage. Silent movies were the main attraction, but Hunt also presented live drama, as well as vaudeville acts accompanied by a full orchestra. Talking pictures debuted in 1928, and Medford audiences were stunned to hear Al Jolson sing in “The Jazz Singer.” Hunt was known for promotional stunts. When a Western called “The Pioneers” opened, he asked local pioneers to write their memories of the trek to Oregon, and at the premiere of “Just Imagine” in 1930, he encouraged folks to imagine what Medford would be like in 1980. Hunt sold the theater to Fox West Coast Theater Co. in 1929, shortly before the stock market crash sent the country into the Great Depression. He returned in 1933 after the Fox chain filed for bankruptcy. To bolster the box office, he lowered the 50-cent price of admission to 15 cents. After Hunt’s death in 1943, the theater changed hands several times. Ticket sales gradually declined as television and multiplex theaters drew audiences away from downtown theaters in the 1960s and 1970s. The Craterian closed Aug. 24, 1984, two months short of its 60th birthday, and the building was donated to the Rogue Valley Art Association, with hopes of rebirth as a performing arts center. In 1985, the Craterian was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as Medford’s first “Movie Palace.” Lindsay Berryman, who later became mayor of Medford, led the campaign to save the theater not only for its historical significance, but as part of an effort to revitalize Medford’s downtown.
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Rogers headlined a benefit gala for the $5 million theater restoration effort in 1993. The Academy Award-winning actress, Broadway star and dancing queen, who paired with Fred Astaire in 10 hugely successful musicals, had been an on-and-off resident of the Rogue Valley since 1940. Rogers often took refuge from Hollywood on her 1,800-acre ranch on the banks of the Rogue River between Eagle Point and Shady Cove. Her Guernsey dairy cows supplied milk to the troops stationed at Camp White during World War II, and she had become a local legend with her prowess as a fly-fisher and hunter. She was a regular customer at Quality Market on Jackson Street and frequented the cosmetics counter at Woolworth’s. When she sold the ranch in 1990, she bought a summer home in Medford, so it came as no surprise that Rogers stood in the footlights of the Craterian again. GINGER At the benefit, she ROGERS entertained a packed house with Hollywood stories and played her favorite film, “Roxie Hart.” Ironically, a dance sequence in the 1920s-era movie featuring Rogers doing the Charleston was cut. Rogers’ appearance gave a $100,000 boost to the project, and her fame helped secure funds from the Fred Meyer Trust. A completely restored Craterian opened March 1, 1997. After Rogers’ death in 1995, theater patrons collected 3,300 signatures to persuade Medford City Council to rename the building the “Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.” Rosebushes grown by Rogers grace neighboring Vogel Plaza, and with its inviting courtyard, shaded benches and art deco exterior, the Craterian has became the cultural cornerstone of Medford’s continuing downtown revitalization. In 2012, the theater was renamed “the Craterian Theater at The Collier Center for the Performing Arts,” in gratitude to local philanthropist James Morrison Collier. The stage however is still called the Ginger Rogers Stage — an applause to the once-upon-a-time boop-oop-a-doop flapper who helped save “The Crate.” Reach Grants Pass freelance writer Tammy Asnicar at tammyasnicar@q.com.
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By Kaylee Tornay Mail Tribune
The census count as it unfolds in 2020 is far from an one-agency show. The U.S. Census Bureau recruits local partners in communities across the nation to increase the chances that difficult-to-reach people will be counted. This year, those living in the U.S. have had more options to fill out the census than ever before, including doing so online for the first time. And THE U.S. with the unexpected CENSUS rise of the coronavirus, the online option will be even more important. “It’s just an additional service that we provide to people to be able to self-respond,” said Misty Slater, media specialist with the U.S. Census Bureau. “We’re just trying to make it as easy for the respondent as possible.” A century ago, the process was decidedly different. Enumerators — the foot soldiers on the front lines of the census effort — were the main conduits of the questionnaire that the U.S. government depended on to lodge a record of who lived where. Neighborly as it may seem to have a member of your own community visit your home or place of business to take down information on the number of people in your household or whether you owned your home or could read, the local fallout from the 1920 census was an abrupt reminder of the difficulties involved. When Medford residents saw the number from the census in July 1920, a few months after the count had taken place, many were shocked, saying the 5,756-person count was much lower than it should have been. A Mail Tribune article from the time
The 1920 census was the first in which the majority of the U.S. population, including recent immigrants, lived in urban areas.
reported that it represented a 34.9% drop in the city’s population since the 1910 census.Jackson County’s official count was 20,405 people, according to census records, a decline of 5,325 from 1910. After Medford, Ashland was the next-biggest town at 4,283 people. Many residents had their theories as to why Medford’s number was low. No enumerator had ever been seen
at their houses, they said. No one had followed up at their workplace. Local officials — from the Chamber of Commerce to the mayor’s office — wrote to Washington to demand a recount. “The census returns were generally regarded at their true value — a joke,” declared one piece published in the Mail Tribune in 1920. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
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An accurate census count is needed for more than just a data set: communities depend on the count to communicate to the federal government what political representation and federal funding they need and are entitled to. That’s why, over the years, the Census Bureau began bringing partners into its work, to help mitigate the persistent problem of people going uncounted. In addition to nonprofits, such as WeCountOregon, businesses, community centers and even faith institutions sign up to help in that work. Because some people may avoid the census out of fear for undocumented family members, or uncertainty about its purpose, trusted community members and leaders can sometimes more effectively communicate its import than a government flier. “Our partners serve as trusted voices and census ambassadors within their communities,” Slater said. “(They) help us reach everyone, particularly those who have been historically hard to count.” Children younger than 5, people in rural communities, renters and households with undocumented people could all be described as historically undercounted. But back in 1920, one enumerator pushed back on the notion that she and her colleagues had been negligent. Helen Gale, in a letter to the editor, wrote that it was the local residents who had shown so little interest in being counted that had contributed to low numbers. “I got a lot of interesting experience out of the two weeks work, but my little pay check would hardly
replace the shoes I wore out in trotting around after people who didn’t care at that time whether they were enumerated,” she wrote. “At that, I think I can safely say that, due to untiring efforts in pursuing them, no one entirely escaped me, and I feel confident that a re-enumeration would (not) bring the figures up to any noticeable difference.” Several places she had called on up to six or seven times, she said, without ever connecting with the person at home or at work. “If the people had been as interested in the returns
of the census at the time it was taken as they are now, I could have covered my territory in half the time it actually took me,” Gale wrote. These days, face-to-face interactions with a census taker are only likely if you don’t fill out the form sent in the mail or online, and if the reminder letters and postcards sent throughout March and April haven’t accomplished their goal. The Census Bureau expected to hire about 8,800 temporary workers across Oregon to conduct visits this year, Slater said. But precautions around COVID-19 have disrupted
a seat in Congress after this count is finalized. Whenever the census workers come, they should be recognizable. In addition to a Census Bureau ID with a photo and a U.S. Department of Commerce watermark to establish their legitimacy, they’ll also carry resources to connect with people who speak a variety of languages, and those who may need large-print or braille forms. The COVID-19 delay, however, also stifled efforts to reach hard-tocount populations. It pushed back three days planned in April intended to reach out to homeless and unsheltered people, which are among those groups that are tough to count. “It’s hard enough to count the homeless,” Rynerson said. Oregonians with access to “Census takers have a computer can fill out the to work a lot with local Census 2020 questionnaire at people who are knowlmy2020census.gov edgeable about where homeless people might be, but they might not be in the same place due to the virus.” To counter those effects, director of Portland State WeCount Oregon decided University’s Population to focus more on digital Research Center, said in March that he thought those outreach and advertising to dates seemed optimistic. direct people to the census Although census efforts during the COVID-19 will be delayed by several closures. The online option months, for now the date to remained the safest during report numbers to the presthe time of pandemic and ident remains fixed at Dec. social distancing. 31, 2020. “The more people who “Congress can change do that the better, both that,” Rynerson said in a for safety and for saving March news release from the federal government PSU. “But, of course, that’s money,” Rynerson said. a last resort that could have implications for the Reach Mail Tribune reporter work that states do to draw Kaylee Tornay at ktornay@ congressional and other rosebudmedia.com or 541political districts.” 776-4497. Follow her on Oregon is one of those Twitter @ka_tornay. states: it is expected to gain many of the census-taking plans, including changing the timing of when those workers begin conducting their rounds. As social distancing guidance led to the closure of schools and universities and the postponement of many events, the public outreach that would have encouraged greater turnout and the home visits to check up on unresponsive households were also delayed. In-person visits are now forecast to kick off at the end of May and continue into August. Charles Rynerson,
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
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The monument isn’t perched on the edge of the ocean or vast mountains, but there’s something romantic and poetic about it, sitting in the deep forest, cut off from the internet and cellphone coverage.
By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
O
regon Caves, discovered by settlers in 1874, was 20 miles from Cave Junction in a remote forest, so it didn’t take off as a tourist destination until three things happened in the 1920s — a paved road, a lot of private cars and a cozy lodge. With the access provided by roads, it started being promoted as an exotic getaway, rich in fascinating science, lots of rustic handmade
OREGON CAVES Monterey furniture, and rare marble — not the usual limestone — caverns. Eager cave boosters in Grants Pass, called “the Cavemen,” dressed in animal skins, waved clubs about and livened up parades and fairs, pretending to drag cave damsels to their lairs. Such antics made folks grin and got into newspapers and magazines, helping boost
Top: Emily Moss, rear, a physical sciences technician at Oregon Caves National Monument, and Anthony Zeberoff squeeze between layers of bedrock during an off-trail caving tour. Above: Light snow covers the construction site at the Oregon Caves Chateau in 1933. It was completed in 1934.
attendance to the Caves from 1,800 in 1920 to a whopping 28,000 just before the Great Depression hit in 1929. In the beginning, President Theodore Roosevelt, a stalwart visionary for public
lands, got the Caves on track by setting aside the Siskiyou National Forest in 1903 and passing the Antiquities Act in 1908, allowing designation of national monuments, including Oregon Caves in 1909. PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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By the next year, the Caves were staffed with guards and tour guides. With tourism growing, a local Oregon Caves Company took over operation, building cabins and The Chalet, with dining room, gift shop and dorms for workers, in 1923. Now things were happening and, even with the Depression in full swing, in 1934, a stunning six-story Oregon Caves Chateau was built in the rustic style favored by the National Park Service, which eschewed symmetry and straight lines, and emphasized hand labor, native wood and stone and romantic Craftsman architecture that fit in with majestic natural surroundings. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps did much of the work, while employing jobless but creative locals. “The Chateau was such a big deal, and was publicized in The Oregonian,” says Sue Densmore, executive director of the Friends of the Oregon Caves & Chateau. “It was beautiful, in Spanish Revival style, with 25 rooms, private baths, and it held college kids who worked there. It got support from many local investors.” The Monterey furniture was all the rage with Hollywood stars of the 1920s. Will Rogers, Bela Lugosi, Clark
Gable, “they all had it. We did too — and still do.” The monument soared in popularity, hiring 60 lively, sociable college kids (40 boys and 20 of “the cutest” girls) as tour guides, waiters and cooks. They were picked from out of the area, mainly University of Oregon and Oregon State University, so they would be there on weekends instead of going home to spots in the Rogue Valley. They weren’t allowed to have cars. This went on from 1938 to 1978, when the Park Service took over all the jobs. “Their stories are priceless,” she says. “They had great fun, put on skits and became lifelong friends, with some 2,000 alumni holding big reunions at the Caves every five years. Seven marriages came out of it.” The resort took a big hit from the giant 1964 flood, got repaired, and passed the 1 million visitors mark. It made the National Register of Historic Places in 1968. The monument features “Big Tree,” the widest Douglas fir in Oregon, 41 feet in circumference at its base. Five at-risk species of bats were identified in the cave system. The monument isn’t perched on the edge of the ocean or vast mountains, but there’s something romantic and poetic about it, sitting in the deep forest, cut off from
the internet and cellphone coverage. “A good example,” says Densmore with a chuckle, “this couple comes to stay. She’s a spelunker and is in heaven. There are no movies or cellphones, the husband is aggravated and yelling. He asks what there is to do here. I say, ‘Take the cave tour.’ The next day he says, ‘This is the best vacation we’ve ever had, the tour, hikes, breakfast and dinner in the lodge. No one is sitting around on their laptops. We’ve had time to really get reacquainted as friends.’ And they walked out holding hands.” The Chateau is closed this year, getting a seismic upgrade, elevator, new electrical and plumbing, better handicapped access, and restoration of the balconies, which were removed in the 1950s. The rest of the monument remains open, including cave tours. The historical interior is
handled by the Friends of Oregon Caves in partnership with the Park Service and with a grant from Travel Oregon and help from donors. Many families have donated their rustic antique furniture, says Densmore, so it can have a useful life in the lodge. Oregon Caves is “an under-appreciated national treasure,” says Densmore, “a fabulous, remote, creative lodge, an amazing place with wonderful architecture and shaggy bark on the outside, Monterey furniture on the inside and amazing cave tours. It’s great for agency or corporate retreats where people can relax, really get to know each other and have great dining.” Cave tours run from midApril to early November. The basic tour is 90 minutes and gets as narrow as four feet high, with 500 steep, uneven stairs. The temperature in the caves is always 44 degrees.
Left: The Oregon Caves Chalet was constructed in 1923. Today it serves as the Oregon Caves National Monument visitor center, and is the starting point for cave tours. Right: The River Styx, which runs out of the mouth of the cave, cascades into a pool where it becomes Cave Creek. This water will eventually reach the Pacific Ocean.
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An aerial view of Medford in about 1926.
By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
B In 1920, 36% of the population here worked in wood products. Today it’s 8%.
ack in the Roaring ’20s — women voted, cut their hair and smoked cigarettes, flappers danced to jazz music, angular art deco bloomed, radio blared, everyone bought stocks, phones, cars and electric appliances, and millions became criminals by tossing a shot of whiskey. Above all, a booming economy gave people two
EMPLOYMENT wonderful things: a job and a home to call their own. They were boom times. “Medford’s population soared, almost doubled, in the ’20s, going from 5,756 at the start of the decade to 11,007,” and that meant lots of new housing and lots of construction jobs, says Guy Tauer, regional economist here with the State Employment Division.
PHOTOS: TRUWE.SOHS.ORG (TOP); OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (LEFT)
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John Darling is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.
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“The California-to-Oregon Highway 99 opened in 1914, and more people were able to afford automobiles and travel and migrate,” says Tauer, noting that bank deposits 100 years ago show 36% of the population here worked in wood products. Today it’s 8%. The ’20s, says Medford historian Ben Truwe, is “when the lumber industry really took off.” The other giant was agriculture — and money literally grew on trees. “Back then, pears were king,” says Tauer, “and they were generating $10,000 an acre. Harry & David, an ingenious marketer of fruit gift baskets, boomed and endured as a valley mainstay for decades. The payroll of Medford in 1925 was a robust $2.5 million, which would be $37 million today. Timber and everything else staggered through the Great Depression, then jumped to its feet in 1942 for World War II, when the U.S. War Department built Camp White, a massive combat training hub, now White City. This meant a bonanza of timber, construction and service work — and laid a foundation of prosperity for the mid-20th century. “In the early ’20s, the national boom was fed by stock market speculation. That was the spark for the Roaring ’20s,” says Ashland historian George Kramer. “We only started to stabilize and come out of the Great Depression when war and the building of Camp White brought the good times back, economically. “It was amazing. Times were so bad that people came from all over the country to get good-paying military jobs. People were willing to uproot their families, come here and live in tents to work for the government. ... We had 10,000 people who came to Medford, which had only 12,000 people at the time.” As timber faded with the early 1980s recession, our valley made the bumpy transition to wine grapes, medical care, tourism, retirement hub and now, if the trend continues, hemp farming and processing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now shows a nonfarm labor force of 105,000 in Medford, with 22,000 in trade and transportation, 18,000 in education and health, 12,000 in leisure and hospitality, 8,000 in professional and business, 8,000 in manufacturing, 5,000 in finance, and 5,000 in construction. As always, the top draw is that tangible intangible we call quality of life.
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4/14/2020 4:05:08 PM
By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
B
ack in the Roaring ’20s, it might have seemed there was only one “real” architect in the Rogue Valley, and that was classically trained New Yorker Frank Chamberlain Clark, a master of every style, from Cottage to Beaux Arts, a giant whose cachet on a home or building still adds to its value. If you’ve been here a while, you have certainly wandered in (or past) many of his remarkable and enduring creations. If you own one, you have automatic bragging rights, and if you tore one down — a fair number are sadly gone — you definitely try to keep it a secret.
Among the many landmark Southern Oregon buildings designed by architect Frank Clark are the Elks temple on the corner of Fifth Street and Central Avenue (top), and the Sparta Building at Riverside and Main in Medford.
ARCHITECTURE Clark’s creations include the Art Deco Harry & David building, the Chappell-Swedenburg home at Southern Oregon University, the Colonial Carpenter Hall at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Medford Hotel, the Elks Temple in both Medford and Ashland, the Enders block (an early department store on Ashland’s main drag), the Mission Revival Baptist Church now housing Oregon Cabaret Theater, the Art Deco Varsity Theater in Ashland, the Rogue Theater in Grants Pass, the
Craterian and Holly theaters in Medford, the American Renaissance Sparta Building at East Main and Riverside in Medford — and many highclass homes in Medford’s south Oakdale and Genessee districts. In a moving testament to Clark, local historian Dawna Curler’s video lecture, www. youtube.com/watch?v=_ mLSIet7qDQ, shows a rich spectrum of Clark styles — graceful period colonial homes, opulent Beaux Arts, Queen Anne, Craftsman, Tudor, Prairie style, Art Deco and modern, including stucco and poured concrete. More than anyone, Clark lent a “sense of place” to the valley and “fostered a feeling of attachment over time,” says Curler. He rode the pear orchard boom of the mid-1910s and the lumber boom of the mid1920s, she notes. Barons of those economic bubbles demanded and got glorious homes. After World War II, a strange thing happened to architecture in America, as modern tastes called for smooth, straight lines and utilitarian boxy stores and offices, erasing much of the beautiful lines, arches, ornaments, leaded glass and detail on Clark’s work — and the Victorian and Gothic work before it. It was considered “old fashioned and tacky,” says Kramer.
PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (TOP); SOUTHERN OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY (LEFT)
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Frank Clark, inset photo, designed the Varsity theater in Ashland.
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Ironically, Clark took in much work doing that architectural pivot. “Frank Clark is still held in amazingly high esteem in the valley,” says historian George Kramer. “He came early and stayed, never left, so he’s a Southern Oregon architect through thick and thin. He morphed with styles as time passed and did amazing output. He played a huge role in how our valley looks.” Clark built his big “dream home” on East Main Street in Medford, still standing. But after two divorces and a passel of kids, he migrated to a “hovel” in Jacksonville and gutted out the Great Depression, later building wartime housing for troops training at the new Camp White in White City. If you see touches of beautiful Art Deco in his work — as in the Varsity Theater or Bear Creek orchard building on Highway 99 in south Medford — you
can be pretty sure it’s from his younger and trendier partner, Robert Keeney, who took over the business when Clark retired in 1946, notes Kramer. You hear a lot of folks saying “that’s a Frank Clark house,” but often, it isn’t, says Kramer, adding there were other accomplished architects, such as Tourtellotte & Hummel in Portland, who did Lincoln School in Ashland and Lithia Springs Hotel. If you want to make sure it’s a Frank Clark, see the full inventory at sohs.org/fci_view. Kramer, who has put most Clark structures on the National Register of Historic Places, warns, “No one should tear down a Frank Clark. They are generally attractive and well-built and can easily be restored if you want. They don’t build ’em like that anymore, and that’s because there aren’t any people like Frank Clark around anymore.”
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When the Oregon Ducks took on the Wisconsin Badgers in January at the Rose Bowl in Pasedena, California, the setting for the battle could not be more picture-perfect.
By Kris Henry Mail Tribune
T
hey traveled hundreds of miles, fostering the same goal but with vastly different approaches once they finally set foot in Pasadena, California. Much of their preparation involved closely guarded secrets and, once all was said and done, the victor was able to walk away with a hard-earned, one-point advantage. Those words ring as true for the 1920 Rose Bowl as they do for the 2020 edition, with one mighty squad from the East testing its mettle against another from the West. The University of Oregon shouldered the hopes of the West in both cases, and in the 2020 version the Ducks were able to rally for a 28-27 triumph over favored Wisconsin. In 1920, it was Harvard who held on
OREGON GOES TO THE ROSE BOWL for a 7-6 victory — the last of seven college football national championships for the Crimson. Watching the 2020 Rose Bowl showed just how far sporting events have come in 100 years. On Dec. 20, 1919, the Harvard Crimson carried the confidence of all New England as they began a 3,000-mile transcontinental trip to California from Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a New Year’s Day meeting with the Webfoots in what was then known as the Tournament East-West Football Game. While each of the 23 members of the Crimson squad were pronounced fit, there was concern that the six days of Pullman car riding and numerous elevations, shifts and climatic changes
Harvard scores the lone touchdown in the 1920 Rose Bowl against the Oregon ... Webfoots.
might soften the players. Harvard trainer Pooch Donovan outlined a program of special exercises for the journey, utilizing 19 stops for brief outdoor runs to complement a few indoor exercises. Only two days into Harvard’s trip, the Oregon contingent was already headlong into two practices per day in Pasadena under the supervision of head coach Charles “Shy” Huntington and Bill Hayward, the
Webfoots’ trainer since 1902. Having taken a much shorter journey by train in a private railroad car, Oregon’s 25 players and their coaches were determined to make a good showing against the powerhouse Crimson and wanted to get a jump on their training. During the trip, the team stopped briefly on Dec. 19 in Medford, where a small group of supporters met the team at the depot and wished the players luck.
PHOTOS: CBS SPORTS (TOP); PINTEREST.COM (CENTER)
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Hoping to gain an advantage, Oregon had brought along a large tank of Eugene’s municipal water for the excursion. Foreshadowing the program’s penchant for next-level thinking, Huntington said he wasn’t about to take any chances “his boys” would be out of condition because of inferior drinking water. Secrecy shrouded the Oregon camp, with no word on their training details or style of plays, open or massed, that would be used to take down unbeaten Harvard. The Webfoots posted sentinels along the top of the grandstand and at all entrances of Tournament Park during their practices, shooing away all who might be spies for the Crimson. Huntington and Hayward offered only five words to account for their secretiveness: “We are out to win.” The Webfoots, mind you, had to make up for the stark difference between teams. While Oregon held an edge in speed, a trait that would play out again in 2020, the “beefy” Harvard players held an advantage in size. “If the Harvard men average only 160 pounds as they say,” declared one Oregonian after seeing the Crimson upon their Dec. 26 arrival, “we are bantamweights. But the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” As determined as the Webfoots may have been, the Crimson were equally vocal about having something to prove on New Year’s Day. “All the men know this is an important game, and they can be counted upon to play the game of their lives,” said Harvard coach Robert Fisher. “We wish to give the Westerners an idea of what Eastern football is like. We did not come here for a pleasure trip.” Exceptionally warm temperatures had many of the Crimson practicing with their shoes off, going through their signals with no confusion. Harvard was less secretive about its training, and onlookers were delighted by how the
Oregon defenders wrap up a Wisconsin running back in the 2020 Rose bowl.
Harvard machine would plunge forward in unison, yelling their university challenge as they charged. Short forward passes, line and delayed line ducks were the most practiced plays. For game day in 1919, 35 newspapers from all over the country sent writers to Pasadena, five leased news wires were installed in the 120-foot-long press box, half a dozen commercial wires were put in to carry the “specials” from the writers, and six specially equipped long-distance telephones were arranged to beam news direct to the papers. In Southern Oregon, fans stopped by the Mail Tribune office, where the news crew used the company’s newswires to post game bulletins in the lobby. Medford’s Rialto Theater (later the Joseph Winans furniture store) had a telegraph line installed. While the matinée film played, an on-stage Western Union operator continually read a playby-play description of the action. The 1919 game proved to be a grind, with both teams fumbling and missing field goal attempts in the first quarter before Oregon managed the first points on a 25-yard dropkick field goal by Bill Steers in the second quarter. Harvard scored on a 13-yard run by Fred Church on a drive that was keyed by two catches by halfback Eddie Casey. Arnold Horween added the extra point, which would prove critical as Oregon managed only one more score, a 30-yard dropkick field goal by 128-pound Skeet Manerud to close the first half.
Four other Oregon kicks were blocked or missed in what would end as a 7-6 setback, including a fourth-quarter Manerud attempt that just missed its mark in front of 35,000 on hand for the first post-World War I Rose Bowl game that didn’t feature teams from the U.S. armed forces. Harvard capped its season 9-0-1, outscoring its opponents 229-19, while Oregon finished 5-2 after securing its first conference championship in school history. One hundred years later, for the 106th Rose Bowl, Oregon’s roster had ballooned to 115 players, with a contingent of 250 marching band members and dozens of school officials on plane flights that lasted mere hours. On this New Year’s Day, 90,462 made their way into the Rose Bowl, which was constructed in 1922 and has seen upgrades since, including a near $200 million renovation completed in 2013 that provided a seven-level press box. Another 16.3 million watched the contest live on ESPN, with millions more tuning in through radio broadcasts. Facing another favored foe in Wisconsin, the Ducks used three touchdown runs from quarterback Justin Herbert, standing all of 6-foot-6 and 237 pounds, and a 31-yard return by Brady Breeze (6-0, 196) off a blocked punt to derail the Badgers for a 28-27 triumph. Herbert, a senior from Eugene, was named offensive MVP after completing 14 of 20 passes for 138 yards and one interception to go with his big rushing day, which included a 30-yard, go-ahead TD in the fourth quarter. Breeze, a junior who grew up in Medford before moving to Lake Oswego as a high-schooler, was named defensive MVP for the PAC-12 Conference champion Ducks in their eighth Rose Bowl appearance. PHOTO: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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By Damian Mann Mail Tribune
I
n the previous century, Oregon went through two long periods of prohibition, one for alcohol and another for cannabis. The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors, was ratified by the states Jan. 16, 1919, and went into effect Jan. 17, 1920, with the passage of the Volstead Act. The Oregon wine industry, which thrived even
before Oregon became a state, collapsed during Prohibition. Wineries continued to struggle to regain lost ground from the collapse until the 1960s. In 1975, Oregon won an award in a French wine competition, putting the state on the world wine map. By 2007, wine sales were a $200 million annual business. In 1923, Oregon outlawed cannabis, and then in 1935, Oregon adopted the federal Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, which was part of
Sheriff Charles Terrell and Deputy L.D. Forncrook are shown with confiscated booze behind the county jail in Jacksonville, circa 1922.
a national effort to outlaw pot. In 1973, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize possession of small quantities of cannabis. In 2014, Oregon voters approved legalization of marijuana for adults. In both cases, once these banned substances were legalized, it ushered in a wave of new industries. Oregon has gained a national reputation for its wineries and microbreweries, and recently the state has become renowned worldwide for marijuana,
ALCOHOL & CANNABIS a substance once demonized with various anti-drug efforts, including the 1936 film “Reefer Madness” and the Reagan-era slogan of “Just say no.” Cannabis has opened up a wealth of new markets locally, but the industry still faces headwinds because federal law still treats marijuana as an illegal substance. “From my standpoint, it is reefer madness 2.0,” said Sophia Blanton, a local representative for the Portland-based Caputo Group, a human resources outsourcing company for the alcohol and cannabis industries. “There is still a lot of paranoia about THC.” Blanton said the requirement that hemp plants not have a THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) level greater than 0.3% will continue to have a chilling effect on the industry. THC is the active ingredient in cannabis that gets people high. She said growers try to plant hemp strains that will stay below the limit, but despite their best efforts, their plants sometimes exceed that amount, resulting in potential penalties or the loss of a crop. PHOTO: TRUWE.SOHS.ORG
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Fred Salomon, wine maker, and Linda Donovan, owner of Pallet wine in Medford, stand with oak barrels in their recently expanded storage area. CBD-rich cannabis plants stand in the south canopy at East Fork Cultivars.
She said that these so-called “hot crops” are only a problem for regulators. Processing facilities could easily just extract the CBD (cannabidiol) and not the THC, which would save a lot of crops. “There needs to be some sort of remediation plan for these hot crops,” she said. Because of federal regulations, banking still is problematic for retail stores, and tax write-offs that are common for other sectors are off-limits for many in the cannabis industry. There already were a number of bottlenecks in processing hemp from last year, Blanton said. As a result, there still is a lot of biomass of unprocessed hemp in the system. She said there are enough issues facing hemp grows that it would be helpful to have more regulatory relief
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for the industry. Mark Wisnovsky, owner of Valley View Winery in the Applegate and a hemp company known as Third Generation Farms, said he hopes to see a day when the cannabis industry is treated as fairly as the wine industry. But he said there still is a strong anti-cannabis sentiment in the valley, particularly among some city councils, Wisnovsky said. He pointed to Medford’s recent move to ban the growing of hemp plants inside city limits, even though no hemp grows appear to be located inside the city. Wisnovsky said this puts a chilling effect on businesses who want to set up shop in Medford.
“I personally know of companies that have left because of this anti-cannabis sentiment,” Wisnovsky said. “We should be the Napa Valley of cannabis. We should take advantage of this.” Reach reporter Damian Mann at 541776-4476 or dmann@rosebudmedia. com. Follow him on www.twitter.com/ reporterdm. PHOTOS: KIM NGUYEN (LEFT); MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (RIGHT)
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OPIUM
Past epidemic parallels opioid crisis of today By Vickie Aldous Mail Tribune
W
ith tens of thousands of Americans overdosing each year and pharmaceutical companies paying massive settlements, opioids are in today’s headlines. But 100 years ago, opium was generating headlines in the Rogue Valley. While opioids such as oxycodone and heroin are made by humans, opium is derived from opium poppies. Human use of opium dates back thousands of years. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, opium was fueling racial tensions between white and Chinese settlers and miners in Southern Oregon. Meanwhile, the drug was marketed as a treatment for everything from an infant’s cough to a woman’s menstrual pain, leading to widespread but hidden addiction. Settlers from European countries favored alcohol, while Chinese settlers used opium as a social lubricant and to ease pain from manual labor, according to Chelsea Rose, a Southern Oregon University research archaeologist who has excavated local sites. Chinese laborers used a complex system of pipes to vaporize and inhale the alkaloids in opium. It was easiest to do so while lying down. “The optics of that made it look like the person was wasted and couldn’t sit up,” Rose said. “But this was going on during the Gold Rush, and the Chinese people were working. They weren’t just addicts laying around. We don’t see a lot of evidence of actual opium ILLUSTRATION: OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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Political cartoons stoked fears about Chinese immigrants and opium dens in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
dens. There were some busts of opium dens in Medford in the early 20th century and they didn’t find much opium.” Fears of opium dens spiked in the 1910s, when newspaper headlines proclaimed a woman had been rescued from “white slavery.” After one Chinese man stabbed another during a robbery, Viola Miller, a white woman with a long list of aliases, emerged as a witness to the crime.
Newspapers claimed she had been kept in a small room inside a Chinese laundry on the banks of Bear Creek in Medford. “Dark and filthy, this small chamber, about 10 feet square, gives evidence of such unspeakable horrors as to make men wonder how such things can be,” the Medford Mail Tribune reported in an article about Miller’s life in 1912. The newspaper said, “Viola Miller was not confined to the room by the antiquated method of bars and locks.
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The Chinese have a more cruel and effective method of Doctors who had been systematically prescribing keeping their slaves within their power. They taught her opium to maintain their patients’ addictions could no the opium habit.” longer do so. Patients sought out drugs on the streets. Miller would always be drawn back to her masters by “It was a time period in history when the ‘addict’ idencraving for the drug, the newspaper said. tity emerged,” said SOU assistant researcher Kelly Szott, In an attempt to break Miller free from her addiction, a medical sociologist. “Opium users had to seek drugs officials made plans to confine her in the county jail for through illicit underground channels. They flipped from two or three months, the newspaper said in a later article. being individual users to being criminals.” Miller was later sent to Portland to receive treatment Cities responded by opening narcotic clinics for the for her addiction, but she escaped, and opium “again addicted, but most were shut down by the federal govasserted its complete mastery over the girl,” the Ashland ernment in 1921, Smithsonian magazine reported. Tidings reported in 1912. The clinics have parallels to modern methadone clinics. Raids on Chinese laundries and other places suspected Methadone can curb drug cravings, allowing people of housing opium dens continued into the 1920s, accordstruggling with addiction to function in daily life. ing to newspaper accounts. More recently, other medications have emerged to curb As the public fretted over opium dens, opium sold as cravings while treating opioid withdrawal. People who medicine was also taking a toll. combine supportive counseling with medication-assisted Opium had been in use as a medtreatment have lower relapse rates, icine in America since colonial days research shows. and triggered an addiction epidemic In the Rogue Valley, the La Cliduring and after the Civil War. By nica network of health care clinics the 1870s, medical journals were and other clinics such as the Oasis publishing warnings about the danCenter in Medford are normalizing gers of addiction. the treatment of addiction. They Middle- to upper-class white integrate regular health care with women made up the majority of medication-assisted treatment people addicted to opium and morprovided by doctors who understand phine in the late 1800s, according to addiction. Smithsonian magazine. Szott, who moved to the Rogue Sold in bottles, the medication Valley from Indiana in 2018, said laudanum was laced with opium. she was pleasantly surprised by the “A lot of women were using amount of effort being made locally laudanum,” Rose said. “Doctors to help those who are addicted. didn’t understand or pay attention Jackson County has long operated to women’s medical problems. They a syringe exchange program, which had their patients take laudanum, helps reduce the transmission of but the dangers of addiction were HIV, hepatitis C and other disnot communicated. A lot of women eases while people are in the grip of became addicted. It was easy to use addiction. and easy to get.” Founded by a local couple who lost The situation mirrored the scetheir son to a heroin overdose, Max’s Julia Pinsky holds naloxone sprays that nario that played out more recently, Mission gives out free naloxone, can be carried in a purse or car and used when pharmaceutical companies which can quickly reverse an opioid to give life-saving treatment to someone began selling long-lasting opioid overdose. More recently, the nonsuffering from an opiod overdose. pain pills in the 1990s — all while profit has begun giving out test strips downplaying the risk of addiction. to check for fentanyl — a powerful, “I think it’s interesting that a lot often-deadly synthetic opioid some of people are recognizing the parallel to where we are now dealers add to heroin, counterfeit pain pills and other drugs. and where we were then,” Rose said. “Opioids can be Societies will likely always struggle with substances — effective, but they can be dangerous.” either natural or man-made — that stimulate the pleasure With concern about opium growing in the early 1900s, center of the brain while insidiously drawing users into a 1909 law restricted opium imports and drove prices up addiction. — pushing many users toward more potent opioids like Experts say the best approach will always recognize heroin and morphine, the magazine reported. addicts as human beings in need of help. A similar effect is playing out today, with some people “When the Chinese were associated with opium, it was turning to heroin when they can no longer access opioid easy to vilify users as the ‘other.’ Now people are recogpain pills. And like police who made plans to jail Miller nizing that opioids are more of a problem with everyday to break her addiction a century ago, law enforcement people — from high school students to suburban moms. officials in Jackson County today are pitching a massive It’s not as easy to vilify users,” Rose said. jail expansion as a way to help addicts in lieu of better Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776treatment options. 4486 or valdous@rosebudmedia.com. Follow her on The federal Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 resulted in Twitter @VickieAldous. the virtual prohibition of opium. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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This 1924 photo shows initial stages of the construction of the dam creating Emigrant Lake near Ashland. Creation of the lake submerged the tiny hamlet of Klamath Junction.
By John Darling
IRRIGATION
for the Mail Tribune
W
ithout “the ditch,” as many call it, the Rogue Valley would not have had the irrigation water fed by manmade lakes in the mountains to slake the thirst of hundreds of orchards — and to lay the foundation for our valley to become the main commercial center of Southern Oregon. The Roaring ’20s were the years when this complicated and expensive system of dams and ditches got engineered and were put in place, stabilizing orchards, ranching and just about everything
Jackie Auchard and her son Levi, of Medford, paddle at Emigrant Lake. The lake was built in the 1920s to irrigate farmland, but when there’s enough water the lake is used for recreational activities.
agricultural — and it’s all still going today, providing the foundation for the new ag-industries of wine grapes
and hemp. Back in the day, settlers and their children found the valley had perfect weather
and soil for growing just about anything outside the tropics, except for one big problem — most of the rain didn’t fall in the growing season. It fell as snow in the mountains, and that H2O needed to be stored for use in the hot, dry months of late summer. In the late 1910s, a flock of irrigation districts formed across the Rogue Valley — and the key to the system was the canals of the Talent Irrigation District and the dams that created Hyatt Lake and Emigrant Lake to feed them. PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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These irrigation districts — Medford, Eagle Point, Talent and more — “brought sustained irrigation to the valley,” says TID Manager Jim Pendleton. “Natural rainfall just wasn’t sufficient to take care of all the fruit trees in the valley. What those old engineers built, it really made sustained agriculture happen in this area.” In the beginning, during the 1850s, settlers could ranch with cattle and sheep, and grow wheat. The Billings family changed things in 1854, bringing the first precious pear tree seeds across the Plains and starting tiny orchards in the Valley View area of Ashland, according to the TID website. With the completion of the northsouth railway in 1887, global markets for Rogue Valley pears boomed, and you could make up to $700 an acre, a phenomenal amount in those years. This caused a local land and building bubble that popped in 1912. To stabilize orchards, seven irrigation districts were formed at great expense between 1915 and 1921, with the biggest, TID, serving Ashland, Talent, Phoenix and south Medford. In the 1920s, Emigrant Dam (and lake) were created, with irrigation canals on both sides of the Bear Creek Valley going north as far as Phoenix. Emigrant Dam was started in 1924, and to pay for construction of its facilities, TID sold three issues of bonds between 1919 and 1927 for $1.2 million. The Rogue Valley pear industry gained fame throughout the country and in
Europe. It peaked with 400 growers at the time of the giant stock market crash in November 1929. Many farmers went bankrupt in the Great Depression and had to sell or abandon orchards. Irrigation districts couldn’t pay bond holders and had to be bailed out by the federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation. On top of financial woes, drought hit hard. All survived, anchored by the prosperous Harry & David Bear Creek Corporation, but everyone had to “run lean” for years, says Pendleton. The Federal Reclamation Bureau joined in, and the focus expanded to hydropower generation. Recent decades have seen a fading of pear orchards and a boom in wine grapes and hemp production, but these, “surprisingly enough, are very water-efficient, not that thirsty, because they use drip irrigation,” says Pendleton. Covering canals and piping the water can save much water (from evaporation), but it’s very expensive. In Ashland, property owners have resisted efforts to pipe the Ashland Canal for fear the loss of the ditch will hurt their property values. Still, “we put as much as we can underground,” Pendleton notes. It’s always a worry when winter rains don’t come — and now, “I’m not going to call it a drought, but snowpack is only 70 percent,” Pendleton said in late February.
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By Sarah Lemon for the Mail Tribune
S
panning the 20th and 21st centuries, historical bridges in Southern Oregon likely will exist for another 100 years — or longer. “I can’t imagine us ever tearing them down,” says Gary Leaming, spokesman for Oregon Department of Transportation. Rock Point Bridge and Caveman Bridge, both crossing the Rogue River, are beloved landmarks of celebrated Oregon engineer Conde McCullough, who built hundreds of bridges in the decades between the two world wars. Art deco design that defined the 1920s and ’30s is evident in McCullough’s bridges, often embellished
INFRASTRUCTURE
The Rock Point Bridge, shown under construction circa 1920 (above) was designed by Conde B. McCullough, and upgraded (top) in 2009.
with obelisks, pylons, spires or decorative railings. Combining aesthetic appeal and solid engineering, McCullough’s were among the most technically
advanced bridges of their day. “They will be here in 100 years,” says Leaming. One of the rockiest points on the Rogue River posed
one of McCullough’s earliest engineering challenges. Built in 1920, the 505-foot Rock Point Bridge near Gold Hill often is cited as among McCullough’s first bridges after he took the post of bridge engineer for the Oregon State Highway Commission in 1919. The 1920s were the golden age of American bridge-building. Once automobiles had irrevocably captured the country’s imagination, engineers had steady work spanning rivers, creeks and bays from coast to coast.
PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (TOP); OREGON DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (BOTTOM)
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McCullough came to Oregon in 1916, after training in Iowa, to teach engineering at Oregon Agricultural College, which became Oregon State University. McCullough probably is best known for numerous bridges he built along the Oregon coast’s Roosevelt Military Highway — now known as Highway 101 — including the green-painted, steel bridge over Coos Bay that bears his name in memoriam and is designated on the National Register of Historic Places. McCullough died in 1946. Compared with the impressive cantilever and multi-arch bridges that McCullough designed later in his career, Rock Point with its 113-foot arch seems almost quaint. Completed at a cost of about $48,000, the bridge has a reinforced concrete deck arch, ornate concrete handrails and urn-shaped balusters. Over time, the balusters were struck by vehicles and weakened; some were replaced with materials not in keeping with the original design. Although “functionally obsolete” by ODOT standards, the narrow, two-lane bridge remained structurally sound when the state in 2009 embarked on a $3.9 million project to rehabilitate Rock Point. The bridge was closed for about a year while crews repaired the deck, side rails and cracked concrete beneath the structure. Rock Point bears Highway 99 over the Rogue near Del Rio Vineyards and — at some point in the distant future — may be open only to pedestrian traffic, says Leaming. Unlike Rock Point, the 550-foot Caveman Bridge in Grants Pass remains a vital link in the intersections
between Highway 99 through downtown, Highway 199, which joins the Rogue Valley to the coast, and Highway 238 through the Applegate Valley. Considered a “mini McCullough,” the Caveman Bridge is unusual in its “through-arch” design, in which the road runs in the middle of the arches, rather than atop or at the arches’ bottom. It opened in 1931. ODOT completed an approximately $5.3 million overhaul of the Caveman Bridge about a year ago, says Leaming. The first major upgrade since it originally opened, the project repaired and strengthened sections of cracked concrete, exposed rebar and failed joints, and repaired deterioration of the bridge deck, overlaying it with stronger concrete. ODOT also replaced the bridge rail, maintaining its unique historical aesthetic while meeting modern safety standards, and added new lighting in keeping with the character of the bridge’s old-fashioned street lights. Reiterating that these — and other McCullough-built — bridges adorn Oregon with a “string of pearls,” Leaming says transportation officials still admire the engineer’s legacy. “They’re gems for sure.” Reach freelance writer Sarah Lemon at thewholedish@gmail.com. PHOTOS: OREGON DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (TOP); CITY OF GRANTS PASS (BELOW)
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By John Darling for the Mail Tribune
COVERED BRIDGES
One development that made the Roaring ’20s roar was the explosion of automobile ownership and the urgent completion of Highway 99, which spurred building of many covered bridges. You may think of covered bridges as quaint, adorable fixtures, but they were vital for getting over Oregon’s many rivers and streams — and that included many on Highway 99’s long trek from Canada to Mexico. At their peak, over 400 covered bridges operated in Oregon, and some 56 remain, says Ashland historian George Kramer, who scrutinized dozens of them for placement on the National Register of Historic Places. They didn’t get “houses” on top of them because they’re charming. In those days, bridges were built of wood, and there were lots of trees nearby to cut and use for beams and planks — and Oregon is very wet, and if water sits on a the deck of a wooden bridge, it soon rots and vehicles go in the drink, he says.
PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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The covered bridge across Little Butte Creek in Eagle Point is back on the National Register of Historic Places.
construction. But for mysterious reasons, covered bridges had worked their way into people’s hearts, and folks dedicated themselves to saving and even replacing them with exact replicas. The Antelope Creek bridge fell into disuse, and in 1987, volunteers hauled it 10 miles on a makeshift trailer to Eagle Point, where it was restored as a pedestrian bridge, used by schoolchildren to get to school. The Grave Creek bridge is the most viewed covered bridge in Oregon, as it’s in plain sight from the freeway and sits next to the Applegate Trail Museum. It’s the last remaining covered bridge on old north-south 99. It was built in the rush to finish Highway 99, which in 1926 became the longest continual paved highway in the world. The Wimer bridge has a harrowing death-rebirth story to tell, as well as an ensuing community dedication story. In July 2003, it collapsed with two boys and their grandpa on board. They survived. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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Locals rejected the county’s offer to build “a boring old concrete bridge,” as it was called. They launched a nonprofit, and with local fundraisers and grants from the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program and Josephine County, they built a replica, which opened in 2008. People have a serious “thing” about covered bridges. When Kramer was out measuring and cataloging them, enamored hobbyists would come along with license plates from Michigan and Nebraska, take selfies on the bridges and have a barbecue chicken lunch on it, then check it off
their “life list” of covered bridges they’d bagged, he said. “They’re iconic, like something in a Norman Rockwell painting. People talk about how they’d grabbed a smooch on a covered bridge, where no one can see you. They think of earlier, simpler times. In the truest sense of the word, they’re quaint. “Communities put them on T-shirts and corporate logos. Their windows frame the river. They rumble when you drive over them. With all the modern bridges on I-5, nothing happens. They’re just roads across space,” Kramer said.
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“It’s a very functional thing. Replacing bridges all the time is not functional. It’s easier to make ‘roofs over rivers,’ as they were called. They put walls on them to keep out rain blowing in from the side. It prevented being wet-drywet-dry, because that’s what causes rot,” he notes. The ’20s saw the creation of a trio of still-beloved covered bridges in Southern Oregon — the Antelope Creek bridge in Eagle Point (1922), the Grave Creek bridge beside Interstate 5 in Sunny Valley (1920), and the Wimer bridge over Evans Creek, 7 miles northeast of the city of Rogue River. They and many others are detailed at the preservation-minded Covered Bridge Society of Oregon, found at covered-bridges.org/. In part, because of their “incredible” work, Oregon has more covered bridges standing west of the Mississippi than any other state. In the 1930s, as trucks got wider and heavier, engineers designed steeltruss bridges, then in the 1950s came concrete slab
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By Tammy Asnicar
TOURISM
for the Mail Tribune
I
n 1922, while the rest of America was roaring through the Jazz Age, a group of Grants Pass businessmen stepped back into the Stone Age. Dressed in animal pelts, long-matted horse hair and snaggle-toothed fangs, the club-carrying Neanderthals initiated a unique marketing strategy to lure tourists to “the wilds” of Southern Oregon. The Oregon Cavemen — Southern Oregon’s best-known booster club — started as a gag with five guys dressed up in gunny sacks showing up at a Grants Pass Commerce Club in the early 1920s. The road to the Oregon Caves had been improved, and tourists were slowly beginning to make the trek to its marble halls. Fifty miles away, savvy business leaders were
The Cavemen were known to crash TV and radio shows as a way to promote Southern Oregon.
looking for a novel way to promote the caves and Grants Pass as the gateway to the “Redwood Empire” and “Pacific Wonderland.” After its official debut March 4, 1922, the club began meeting at noon every Monday in the Oxford Hotel in downtown Grants Pass. At one of those meetings, a fair-haired, 16-year-old dancer, Iris Burns, was invited to entertain. Enthralled, the men named her princess. At the next meeting — held at her uncle’s restaurant in the hotel — she was crowned Cave Queen. For the next three years, the teenager traveled with the ape-like Cavemen promoting the beauty of Southern Oregon and Oregon Caves National Monument. SEE CAVEMEN, PAGE 74
PHOTO: LLOYD SMITH HISTORICAL COLLECTION
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Above: The Oregon Cavemen — Southern Oregon’s best-known booster club — started as
a gag with five guys in gunny sacks at a Grants Pass Commerce Club in the early 1920s. Left: L.A. Ringuette, a Grants Pass store owner, was one of the original Cavemen. Dubbed “Flame Watcher,” he carried a 30-pound club made from an oak burl and resorted to zany antics to promote tourism. Despite his surly scowl here, he had a mischievous side. He would place pop-gun caps in the metal tab at the end of the club, sneak up behind people and pound the club down on the ground, firing off the cap with a loud bang.
Above: Shirley Temple visited Grants Pass in the early 1930s and met the Oregon Cavemen. Above right: Oregon Gov. Tom McCall drinks “the blood of a saber-tooth tiger.” Right: Richard Nixon, then a 1968 presidential candidate, is given a ceremonial mastadon’s jaw.
PHOTOS, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: JOSEPHINE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY; LLOYD SMITH HISTORICAL PHOTO COLLECTION; OREGON ENCYCLOPEDIA.ORG; GETTYIMAGES.COM; LLOYD SMITH HISTORICAL PHOTO COLLECTION
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The Redwood Empire sign was erected just after the new Redwood Highway was finished in the 1920s. Research says the sign was gone by the 1940s.
FROM CAVEMEN, PAGE 72
Sans the Caveman garb, members were more subdued in leopard-skin vests or blazers at the weekly meetings. In 1990, now Iris Turpin, the spry 84-year-old resident of Ashland shared her memories. “It was a lovely experience, and very enjoyable,” she said of her days scantily clad in a rabbit-fur dress and cascading flowers in her hair. “My aunt was my chaperone, and we were put up in the best hotels in the state,” she recalled. The young lady and her surly companions appeared several times at the Portland Rose Festival and were on hand for the dedication of the Greensprings Highway. “It was a big deal then,” Turpin said of the new highway opening up travel between Ashland and Klamath Falls. The highlight of her “career” as Cave Queen was a “starring role” in a promotional movie filmed at the Oregon Caves. “A motion picture company came and filmed the exterior and interior of the caves,” Turpin recalled. “It was before there were any stairs inside or lights. We had to crawl on our hands and knees and use candles for light.” In 1924, the Cavemen issued a “passport to Caveman Domain” to intrepid travelers and staged zany photo opps to promote Grants Pass and Josephine County’s wild and scenic destinations. With a boost from the Cavemen, visitation to the Oregon Caves during the 1922 season increased by almost 10 times to 10,000, and by 1929 more than 28,000 visitors were clocked making the trip up the mountain. After her reign, Turpin went to work for the Grants Pass Daily Courier. In 1925, when another reporter called
in sick, she landed an interview with baseball legend Babe Ruth and his wife. “They were charming people, but I was tongue-tied,” she said. During that same visit, Babe Ruth was initiated into the Oregon Cavemen, the first in a long roster of celebrities forced to drink “the blood of a saber-tooth tiger” — really tomato juice in a soda bottle wrapped in skunk
Unidentified members of the Oregon Cavemen.
skin — and eat slabs of raw meat. The club’s heyday spanned some 50-plus years, with the likes of boxer Jack Dempsey, child star Shirley Temple, and politicians Thomas Dewey, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, John and Robert Kennedy and Mark Hatfield being “kidnapped” and made honorary Cavemen. Other promotional gimmicks
included shipping sheep jawbones to members of Congress as an invitation to the dedication of Caveman Bridge in 1931 and stopping traffic on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. They crashed radio and television shows, and once even a Broadway stage show. The Cavemen are credited with helping boost the region’s tourism business, and before branding was a marketing strategy, the Caveman logo and name became synonymous with Grants Pass. Several businesses wear the Caveman name, from auto parts to towing companies, and the Caveman Kiwanis is an active service club. In addition to the city’s landmark Conde McCullough bridge, a shopping plaza, the city pool and bowling center also bear the name. Grants Pass High School’s mascot is — what else? — a caveman. A 17-foot fiberglass caveman sculpture on an eight-foot pedestal, rather than the flesh and blood greeter of old, welcomes tourists who enter Grants Pass from Interstate 5 at Exit 58. Despite its wild success, the Caveman Club went into hibernation in the late 1970s and remained so for much of the next three decades. A newly organized club made its first appearance since 1977 at opening day of the Oregon Caves in 2014 and marched in the Memorial Day weekend Boatnik parade that same year. The club, under the auspices of the Grants Pass Active Club, makes ceremonial appearances these days. Most recently, they were spotted at last year’s dedication of the refurbished Redwood Empire sign and the Caveman Bridge. Reach Grants Pass writer Tammy Asnicar at tammyasnicar@q.com.
PHOTOS: LLOYD SMITH HISTORICAL COLLECTION (TOP); JOSEPHINE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY (CENTER)
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Trips during the 1920s to the Rogue River served as inspiration for the famed Western author Zane Grey.
OUTDOORS
By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune
W
estern author Zane Grey was in the early days of his storied career a century ago when he learned how to fly-fish for steelhead on the Rogue River, and he worked the river’s magic into a series of novels that still resonate in the 21st century. In his 1928 book, “Tales of Freshwater Fishing,” Grey introduced the world to the previously little-known river and its storied denizens — wild summer steelhead — which would savagely attack a well-presented fly and fight like the dickens until subdued by net or hand.
A Rogue River rafter takes a break in front of Zane Grey’s one-room cabin, where in the words of the famous novelist, “It flows through a lonely valley set down amid the lofty green mountain slopes.”
“It is icy water, crystal clear. It runs between high mountain slopes of Oregon forests. And it is full of beautiful, savage and unconquerable fish,” Grey wrote. Grey’s writings in the 1920s portrayed a
take-charge image of the American spirit that still lives today in the rugged aspects of the West. His vivid writing and conservation ideas make Grey a timeless figure in American literature, said one of the
writer’s three sons in a 1992 interview with the Mail Tribune. “In the final analysis, it isn’t what the man was,” said Loren Grey, a psychologist and author in his own right. “It’s what he created, and that’s still here.” Zane Grey was a New York City dentist in 1904 when he wrote, illustrated and published his first novel, “Betty Zane.” Eight years later, his “Riders of the Purple Sage” became known as the consummate Western novel, and his career skyrocketed. He became one of America’s most popular fiction authors, writing 56 Westerns and other novels, while also writing prolifically about fishing.
PHOTOS: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES (TOP LEFT); HERITAGE AUCTIONS (TOP RIGHT); GRANTS PASS DAILY COURIER / VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (CENTER)
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His popularity from 1910-30 eclipsed everything except McGuffey’s Readers, which were books for children in the early grades of school, and the Bible. Grey was also a devoted flyfishermen and outdoorsmen, and is considered by many to be the father of American outdoor writing. Grey died of a heart attack in 1939 at age 64. Southern Oregon State College history professor Jay Mullen, in the Mail Tribune’s 1992 article, called Grey a “tremendous storyteller” whose work not only plays today in Peoria, but it also rings true in the Rogue Valley. “Zane Grey is speaking to us as Southern Oregonians by virtue of what he had to say about the Rogue River, what he had to say about the West, fishing and ourselves,” Mullen said. Loren Grey, who accompanied his father on several of his journeys, said Zane Grey was very fond of the Rogue River, and spent several months at a time fishing out of his cabin in the early 1920s at Winkle Bar downstream of Grants Pass, within what is now the Rogue’s protected Wild and Scenic section. The cabin remains a staple for visits by those floating the Wild Rogue each summer. Also, it has been heavily fortified by firefighters when flames have raged through the area in recent years. It was on the Rogue River that Grey learned to flyfish during the 1920s. Grey often awoke at dawn to write in his tent for an hour, then fish. If the weather was bad, he’d sit in his tent writing all day, Loren Grey said. He’d also shut himself into cabins, rooms in cruise ships, and other places to write novels, which he always penned in long-hand until a stroke left him partially paralyzed a few years before his death, his son said. While Grey the writer and visionary was hailed throughout the country, he was less popular in Southern Oregon. Local lore in Grants Pass and along the North Umpqua River had it that Grey hired people to reserve prime fishing holes for him. “I think he probably did that,” Loren Grey said in the Mail Tribune. “He never told anybody to run people off the river,
Author Zane Grey works on a rustic cabin he built on a mining claim he bought in 1926 along the Rogue River. The Trust for Public Lands bought the property and sold it to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management so it could be preserved.
but I know he sent people to pretend to fish (at certain spots) until he got there.” Loren Grey, who died in 2007, acknowledged that his father had an unsavory local image. “He was not tactful,” Grey said of his father. “He antagonized people. “He went down to New Zealand and
told them that they didn’t know how to fish,” he said. “Of course, he was right, but he told everybody.” But the author’s telling role in history sits with his capturing of the American spirit in writings soaked up by millions. “I hope we don’t lose it,” Loren Grey said. PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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Ashland’s iconic lithia water has bubbling on the Plaza since 1927 By Tony Boom
Ashland’s lithia water fountain was built on the downtown Plaza in 1927. The system was refurbished in 2007.
for the Mail Tribune
L
ithia water has been available at an Ashland Plaza fountain since 1927, the outgrowth of an effort a decade earlier to create a mineral water-based tourism center that never emerged. Eight bubblers mounted on a granite base flow at all times except in unusually cold weather. No plans for any lithia water developments in the 2020s have been announced, but there are also no plans to eliminate the novelty that attracts both tourists and locals. City officials invested $35,000 to rebuild the fountain in 2007. “It’s one of the unique things about Ashland that everyone has to try. Most people don’t particularly like it, but they have to try it,” said Ashland Public Works Director Paula Brown, who oversees maintenance of the system that brings the water four miles into town from Pompadour Chief Spring. Natural lithia water is rare, and from the 1880s to World War I it was consumed for its purported health benefits. In 1914, city voters passed a $175,000 bond to develop Lithia Park and to bring the water to town. “Ashland Grows While Lithia Flows” was a campaign slogan. While the mineral water-based tourism never took off, the city has become a popular vacation sport for other reasons. “Ashland was seen at one time — and still is — as a destination of healing,” said Katharine Cato, sales and marketing director with the Ashland Chamber of Commerce. “It has evolved into a very appreciated destination that not only has the restaurants, wine, outdoors and culture, but you also have the underlying feeling of wellness.” “We are not aware of any future plans,” said Cato, when asked about potential development related to the water. Brown said she’s heard no talk of discontinuing the system. In 2007 the fountain was restored to its original appearance in a city-funded overhaul. The original fountain had suffered from vandalism and deterioration. A new granite base was created, and replicas of the original 1927 bubbler basins were crafted. More durable
LITHIA WATER internal support has aided the structure, Brown said. Historical preservationist George Kramer oversaw the restoration, locating granite that was like the original that came from a quarry near Ashland, and tracking down a porcelain basin identical to the original. Basin castings were made from the original in bronze by a Portland firm. They were then sent to Ohio for porcelain powder coating. Extras were made to prepare for future calamities. The water had been used at the longgone Helman Baths, but the city won’t sell it now, because it doesn’t meet quality standards, so it has to be called a novelty, said Brown. A sign by the bubblers warns that daily consumption is discouraged due to high levels of barium. Wood stave piping was originally used, but that tended to clog with mineral buildup. Those lines were replaced by lead and steel pipe, which was later replaced by plastic, which has proven
to be a bit more durable, Brown said. Repairs are made in the line as leaks appear. The delivery line is deep enough that it doesn’t freeze, but the bubblers are turned off when the temperature drops into the teens. “Almost every year, just because of the corrosiveness of the water, we have to replace all the (fountain) lines. We do that pretty much in house,” said Brown. In 1982 the fountain was given the American Water Works Association “landmark designation” through efforts by former public works director Al Alsing. The original plaque commemorating the honor was vandalized and lost, but a replacement was installed last year. Besides the Plaza location, the water is also available from two spigots in a mineral-stained rock base in the Henry and Jennie Enders memorial gazebo in Lithia Park near the Butler Band Shell. While no healing establishments are linked into the current system, Cato noted that Lithia Springs Resort and Jackson Wellsprings three miles north of downtown have mineral baths fed by springs in that area.
PHOTO: MAIL TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
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