His diary records that Martin Peterson preached, worked hard and suffered painful losses during his life. The Southern Oregon Historical Society has recently added the diary to its research library.

When the Douglas Memorial Bridge was built to span the Klamath River in Klamath, Calif., in 1926, it drew immediate controversy because its piers, anchored in the channel, obstructed the river’s natural course.

Josef Slowikowski was born in Poland and grew up in a small village near Warsaw. At age 17 he worked in the Nazi forced labor camps until the liberation. In 1950, Slowikowski boarded the Queen Elizabeth in England and sailed to New York City.

The Holly Theater opened as both a stage and movie theater in Medford, Ore., on Aug. 29, 1930. The first performance was a local production that played to a sold-out audience of 1,200 at $1 a ticket.

The orchard boom of the 1900s stimulated rapid population growth in Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley. Among the new arrivals were Mr. and Mrs. Frank Madden of Chicago. They bought acreage on Old Stage Road in the Central Point area, built a house and planted Fairview Orchards.

In 1970, emigrant trail enthusiasts founded non-profit Trail West, Inc. to research, locate and mark the pioneer trails to California and Oregon. Since then, it has placed 700 markers on 2,000 miles of trails across Southern Idaho, Utah and Nevada, and into California and Oregon.

The Jackson County Courthouse, newly renovated in 2016 with modern heating and air conditioning, has transitioned into the Jacksonville, Ore., City Hall.

Jacksonville, the original county seat of Jackson County, didn’t have a proper courthouse until 1884. For years, court had been convened in a crudely built, two-story building shared with the Masonic Temple. The Democratic Times derided the dilapidated structure as “a disgrace to the county,” and the Sentinel asked, “Is it not time that the county had a courthouse that would not be mistaken for a barn?”

Bill Sweet grew up raising cows on his family’s Elk River ranch, near Langlois, Ore., so he jumped at the chance when offered a job in 1937 as tester for the Dairy Herd Improvement Association.

The need for more water in the Central Valley of California has generated countless headlines over the years, and officials there have frequently looked as far as Southeastern Oregon for possible sources of water supplies.