Cholera plagued early Southern Oregon settlers from the mid to late 1800s. Caused by drinking water or food contaminated by the feces of an infected person, the dreaded disease attacked miners and others who emigrated to the West in search of gold or a new life.

Timber was essential during the early mining era in Northern California for construction of the flumes that carried water to the gold claims. The first sawmills were built in 1852 in Siskiyou County and by 1860 thirty of them were producing 3.5 million board feet of lumber a year.

In 1862, Travis Meadows was a young Confederate sharpshooter at the siege of Vicksburg. He settled behind a piece of boilerplate with a hole just large enough to shoot through and kept the Union soldiers at bay.

A series of heavy storms in January 1932 brought colder temperatures and the first snowfall in four years to Gold Beach, Ore., making many back-county trails impassable.

Southern Oregon pioneer William Bybee eagerly shared his cure for common digestive troubles based on a woman’s home remedy.

Oregon geologic hazard experts reacted swiftly to the news in December that the White Island volcanic eruption in New Zealand had resulted in multiple deaths and injuries. The state Office of Emergency Management advised Oregonians to be prepared for volcanic activity in the Cascades.

In 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps recruited George Morey and assigned him to a wood-cutting crew at Peavine Ridge near Brookings, Ore. Years later, Morey told this story:

The Liberty Mining District in the Salmon Mountains in southwestern Siskiyou County contained many high-grade gold deposits, first discovered in the 1850s. The area mines remained active into the 20 th century.

On Jan. 1, 1906, Carrie Guerin married Allen H. Boice at Langlois Ore. The bride told her friends, “I’m going to have a dozen children.”

In January 1900, Friedrich Weyerhauser founded the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company in Longview, Wash., with 900,000 acres of Washington timberland. From there the company purchased large tracks of railroad lands for sale by the government and became the world’s largest private timberland owner.