In July of 1918, suspicion fell on enemy sympathizers as the cause of a raging forest fire between Pistol River and Brookings, Ore.

Fire has always been a threat to lumber mills, especially in the days before modern firefighting equipment was close at hand.

Effie Hillsboro was only 17 when she married Wes Birdseye and moved to a hand-hewn log house near Gold Hill, Ore., in 1898. Wes died young, leaving Effie with three boys to raise, a mortgage, and back taxes. Told a “mere woman” could never make a go of it, Effie responded by saying, “This place belongs to me and my boys, and we are going to keep it.”

The Medford Rogues minor league baseball team had a banner year in 2017, winning the championship of the Great Western League. Although the Rogues only started playing in 2013, Medford minor league baseball originated in 1948 with the Medford Nuggets, an affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Moving goods beyond the railroad’s reach between Southern Oregon and California was a dirty and dangerous job requiring sturdy horses and mules.

In 1913, the Oregon Immigration Bureau and Oregon Agricultural College published a book describing a typical farmer in each of several regions in the state. For Southern Oregon’s small farm, they chose to highlight a 13-acre place with a pear orchard and garden area.

A previous episode of As It Was described how an assistant surveyor had narrowly dodged a giant falling boulder while climbing a steep snowfield on the slopes of Mount Shasta.

The Tom Mix Circus came to Medford, Ore., on May 5, 1936, for a one-night stand. A series of incidents made it memorable.

The thousands of people who each year try ascending Mount Shasta might want to consider an early climber’s hair-raising encounter with one of the mountain’s frequent rockfalls.

In July 1930, Ernest Schneider’s favorable first impressions of Illahe swayed him to remain in the remote settlement, despite its inconveniences. Present-day Illahe remains an hour’s drive from Powers or Gold Beach, Ore.