As It Was

Fights over fish in the Rogue River were common in the early 1900’s. Fishing was a profitable business, and fishermen didn't like being told how to fish or when to stop.

The Medford Mail Tribune reflected the town’s excitement in describing the dedication of the first municipally owned airfield in Oregon on Sept. 6, 1920. The newspaper article’s first sentence said, “Beautiful in its sentiment, spectacular in its thrill-features and record-breaking locally in its immense assemblage of humanity and autos, the dedication of Medford's army aviation field and the christening of it as Newell Barber Field yesterday afternoon was successful beyond the most sanguine

A grisly murder turned out to be unfounded when the victim showed up in good health.

On December 7, 1941, the USS Tennessee was berthed on Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor next to the USS West Virginia and the USS Arizona . Seventeen-year-old Boyd Gibson was on the Tennessee getting ready to go on liberty and head to town at 8 a.m.

When the Oregon State Forestry Department needed a dispatcher during World War II, it hired Frances Port Clark. She knew of the woods and the work of rangers and fire fighters from her father, a ranger for the Crater National Forest at its station in Applegate.

As a youth, Edsel Colvin said he gained an education by hanging out in the back room of his father’s candy store in Curry County, Ore. In 1921, when Colvin was 8 years old, Frank Colvin bought the store, the Gold Beach Confectionary. Besides candy, the store offered newspapers, cosmetics, tobacco, ice cream, guns and ammunition, and root beer. But no real beer; prohibition was in full swing.

The Josephine County Board of Education in 1906 deemed it necessary to offer typing classes in high school after businessmen complained about the poor quality of typewritten correspondence. Hand-written correspondence, they said, could conceal spelling and punctuation mistakes, but typewritten letters gave them embarrassing prominence.

It’s been more than a century and a half since the miners of 1849 headed from Shasta to Whiskeytown, Calif., to celebrate the holidays.

In 1892, a group of Methodists at a camp meeting in Central Point agreed to begin a Chautauqua program in Southern Oregon. Their goal was to hold their first event in July of the following year.

Beginning in 1994, round, wood-framed shelters called yurts began dotting campsites in Oregon State Parks. Today there are more than 200, complete with heat and electricity. Felt-covered yurts originated in Mongolia, but the move from nomadic shelter to Oregon campsites involves a U. S. Supreme Court justice and Oregon foresters.