Timeless Town

We met our friends, Bill and Greta, at their home in Central Point, Oregon. Cenral Point was so named by Isaac Constant who settled here in 1852 because it was at the center of the Rogue River Valley. Bill and Greta had a whole day of adventures planned.

First stop a ‘Walking History Tour’ of Jacksonville, Oregon…a town frozen in time. The companies building the transcontinental RR in the aftermath of the Civil War were given sections or land along their RR routes as one incentive to build the RR. It thus was in the RR best interests to bypass existing population centers. The RR knew businesses would move to the RR tracks. They could sell then their sections of land to these businesses and the residents who would follow and make money. Examples of this maneuver can be seen in Mesilla and Albuquerque, NM and in Jacksonville, OR.

In the case of Jacksonville, the RR built five miles to the East in 1884 and the town of Medford was established. Jacksonville the largest town in the Rogue Valley and the County Seat in 1884 died a slow death. In 1927 the County Seat was moved to Medford and Jacksonville almost became a ghost town.

Then came the Greatest Generation. The first generation to have the ‘Golden Years Retirement’. Having fought and won battles and wars with the Great Depression and WWII, they then fought for the creation of pensions, Social Security and Medicare. Retirees on the road helped revive these towns which had been put to bed by the RR. Now Old Town, Albuquerque, Old Mesilla, NM, Jacksonville, OR and many other Western towns bypassed by the RR’s are peaceful oases with lovely B and B’s, wonderful restaurants and cafes and elegant shops.

Then it was a ‘Jet Boat’ trip on the Rogue River. French fur trappers in the 1830’s named the river ‘La Riviere aux Coquins’… the River of the Rogues. The regarded the local Natives as Coquins, Rogues. The headwaters of the Rogue are at Crater Lake in the High Sierras.