As It Was

By 1910, Ashland, Ore., was primed for growth, with a population topping 5,000, a clean water supply, sewage systems and a hospital. Landed families were turning property over to developers for quick sales.

In 1854, a northbound ship anchored offshore near the Chetco River on Oregon’s South Coast and sent three men ashore on a reconnaissance mission. Hostile Indians captured them as they were surveying the area. An Indian boy and his 12-year-old sister, named Skamamahtra, or Prairie Flower, felt compassion for the men and helped them escape and hide nearby.

Crater Lake National Patrol Ranger Alice Siebecker was pursuing a speeding car on the park’s south entrance road in 1982 when the car exploded, ran off the road, and flew 500 feet through the air into an embankment.

The Chelsea Lumber and Box Company announced plans in 1917 to build a new sawmill in Klamath Falls at the county fairgrounds at the south end of Lake Ewauna.

There was a land rush in Oregon in 1902 by people seeking homesteads on timber lands. They poured off the trains in places like Ashland, where self-declared land agents were waiting with buggy and farm wagon to lure them to alleged timber lands 60 to 150 miles to the east.

John William Fitzhugh gave new meaning to the phrase “going barefoot.”

While the concept of the mythical State of Jefferson is popular with some today, a similar separation effort in the 1800’s had more nefarious goals.

In 1861, Sarah Slagle York and her husband moved to a home on Southern Oregon’s Applegate River where they raised 12 children. Years later Sarah wrote down her memories of that time. Here is one of her stories.

Right after World War II, the government offered returning veterans homesteads in the Tule Lake Basin near the California border with Oregon.

In 1910, the Barnum and Bailey Circus came to Medford, astounding the town with a herd of exotic zebras. At least one man refused to be fooled by their beautiful black stripes.