As It Was

In 1911, six dollars in silver wasn’t something anyone would want to lose. However, a man coming out of a business on Main Street in Cottage Grove, Ore., clutching that amount in his money bag quickly threw it aside when he encountered a dangerous situation.

Not long after faith healer Susie Jessel moved in the early 1930s to Ashland, Ore., people were waiting in line, seeking a cure for whatever ailed them. She received them first at her home on Idaho Street and later at her Holly Street clinic.

One of the early colorful characters of Jacksonville, Ore., was Zany Ganung. Born Mary Ross in 1818, she moved from Ohio to Southern Oregon in 1853 with her husband, Dr. Lewis Ganung, settling in Jacksonville around 1855.

A history marker at the intersection of California Rte. 3 and East Side Road notes that giant bucket dredges “turned the Trinity River upside down for (more than) … 50 years, leaving behind mounds of rock trailings.” One of them, the Trinity Dredge, was constructed in 1912 at the Blakemore Ranch and powered by electricity produced in Minersville by water from the Van Matre Ranch.

Two young men learned in 1911 that easy money can result in early arrest.

On July 24, 1928, the editor of Port Orford News , George Sorenson, called for the end to wanton hunting of sea lions. The misguided carnage had been ongoing for a quarter century, and in 1928 hunters received a $10 bounty for each sea lion scalp.

Sentiments for sitting presidents are often mixed. In 1935, a presidential supporter, Jennie Taylor of Ashland, Ore., was so appreciative of President Franklin Roosevelt that she wrote a poem titled “Our President is OK.” Here’s an unofficially edited version.

Jack Stevens was a popular kid in Coquille, Ore., in the 1940s, serving in high school as class president for several years.

In 1880, Rutherford B. Hayes visited Jacksonville, Ore., on an unprecedented tour of the West Coast. He stayed at the U.S. Hotel owned by Madame Jeanne DeRoboam Holt. Madame Holt came to town in the 1850s from France and became famous for her stylish hospitality. She and third husband George Holt were putting the final touches to the new hotel when the President’s visit was announced.

In the year that Oregon became a state, 1859, a group of men left Jacksonville on an expedition into the still unsettled Upper Klamath River Basin.