When A. G. Rockfellow obtained patents for his self-adjusting gate in the 1870s, the people of Ashland, Ore., were not surprised. He’d been experimenting with self-closing and adjustable gates for some time. Rockfellow had emigrated with his brothers to California for the Gold Rush before settling on Wagner Creek in Oregon in 1852. He never liked farming, but he was good at fashioning tools necessary to get a job done. After his marriage in 1857, the Rockfellows moved to Ashland where he was a