A TRIP TO JACKSONVILLE.
BY IDA WEBSTER.

    I went up one Saturday morning on the train and saw their new depot which resembles a small store more than anything else. Then I went out to Mr. Knowles' about 12 o'clock M. In the afternoon Lucerne Rolison and Willie Reames came out and we played ball and several other games. The boys went home and we got supper and then went to bed.
    In the morning we got up and got breakfast and washed the dishes. Then we went out in the barn yard and Dora and Rena saddled and bridled the horses. While the girls were saddling the horses I took a ride on the girl's pet goat and it threw me off in the mud.
    We mounted and were off. We got as far as Griffin Creek and thought we wouldn't have any fun unless we went across the water so we went across the creek. I pretty near fell in. There was a man there and he laughed till we thought he would fall in. We went on as far as Mr. True's place and then we came back and got dinner. After dinner Lucerne and Jim Howard, of Medford, and Mike Galney came out and we played about a couple of hours and then I went down to Jacksonville, boarded the train and returned to my home in Medford well pleased with my trip.
The Young Idea, Washington School publication, April 1891, page 4

A TRIP TO JACKSONVILLE.
BY GRACE DAVIS.

    I went to Jacksonville on a swift passenger train which has just commenced running lately. The train is a combination of an engine and one passenger coach, and sometimes a freight car.
    On my way to Jacksonville I saw a great many things of interest, green fields and pastures, farms, houses, orchards and some very beautiful flowers.
    Some of the people I saw there were very good-looking, and others were not. I also saw some Chinamen, but they were not any different-looking than they are here, because they all look alike. I went around the city awhile and then to the court house to hear a speech, after which I got my dinner at a restaurant. I saw the jail, many large stores and several nice dwellings. For my part I like Medford the best of the two towns for the reasons that it is a larger place and is on the main railroad.
The Young Idea, Washington School publication, April 1891, page 4

A TRIP TO JACKSONVILLE.
BY ROSA MARCUM.

    I reached Jacksonville in a cart drawn by a pony. When I reached the city the pony got scared at a little boy running away from a dog that was going to bite him. I saw some very queer old people there. I met an old gentleman and he asked me where I was going, and I told him I was going until I stopped. On further when we were going through the town we saw a cow trying to jump the fence to got some hay that was in the yard. On a little further I met a friend of mine and she took me to see the court house. It is a very large building and nicely finished. We went out to the park and there we heard some fine music. The band plays well. By this time we thought the pony was tired so we put him in the stable. When night came the train arrived in Jacksonville and we saw lots of Medford people. They said that they came to see the beautiful city of Jacksonville. In the morning I came home and my opinion is that Medford is far ahead of that place in many ways.
The Young Idea, Washington School publication, April 1891, page 4

    Rogue River rises in the Cascade Mountains and courses southwest and west to Grants Pass, where it runs northwest, and again southwest, receiving the Illinois River, which drains Josephine County, about twenty miles from the sea. Rogue River Valley, embracing all the country drained by that river and its numerous tributaries, is an aggregation of smaller valleys divided by rolling hills, the whole encircled by elevated mountain ranges. The river is not navigable for any great distance from the sea, but abounds in rapids and falls, furnishing abundant power for manufacturing purposes. It is a stream of unsurpassed beauty, with water as blue as the sky, and banks overhung in some places with shaggy cliffs and in others with thickets of wild grape vines and blossoming shrubs.
     It is not claimed that there is as great an amount of rich alluvial soil in this section of Oregon as in the valleys north of it. It is rather more elevated, drier, and on the whole more adapted to grazing than to the growth of cereals. Still, there is enough of rich land to supply its own population, however dense, and for fruit-growing no better soil need be looked for. A sort of compromise between the dryness of California and the moisture of Northern Oregon and Washington--warmer than the latter, from its more southern latitude, yet not too warm by reason of its altitude--the climate of this valley renders it most desirable. Midway between San Francisco Bay and the Columbia River, what with its own fruitfulness, and the productions of the Willamette and Sacramento valleys on either hand, within a few hours by railway carriage, the markets of the Rogue River Valley can be freshly supplied with both temperate and semitropical luxuries.
    The grape, peach, apricot and nectarine, which are cultivated with difficulty in the Willamette Valley, thrive excellently in this more high and southern location. The creek bottoms produce Indian corn, tobacco, and vegetables equally well, and the more elevated plateaux produce wheat of excellent quality, and large quantity, where they have been cultivated; still, as before stated, this valley is commonly understood to be a stock-raising, fruit, and wool-growing country--perhaps because that kind of farming is at once easy and lucrative--and because so good a market for fruit, beef, mutton, bacon and dairy products has always existed in the mines of this valley and California.
    Rogue River Valley during a period of about twelve years was the scene of active and profitable placer mining, after which for an equal term the mines were abandoned to the Chinese, but in later years mining has revived, and several companies are realizing good returns from investments in mining ditches and quartz leads. The other minerals known to exist in his region are copper, cinnabar, lead, iron, coal, granite, limestone, kaolin and marble. The latter is of very fine quality, white, exceedingly hard, and translucent.
     Like every part of Oregon, this valley has its mineral springs, its trout streams, its fine forests, game, and abundance of pure soft water. No local causes of disease seem to exist here, and it is hard to conceive of a country more naturally beautiful and agreeable than this. The forest is confined to the mountains and hillsides, and is not so dense as towards the Columbia.
    Rogue River Valley is divided into three counties--Jackson, Josephine and Curry. Jackson County was crested January 12, 1852, and Josephine was cut off from it in January 1856. The name of the former does not refer, as one might suppose, to the deity of good Democrats, but to Jackson the discoverer of the mines on Jackson Creek, after whom Jacksonville, the county seat, was also named.
    Jackson was the owner of a pack train which transported provisions to the mines, who being encamped at this place made himself and the locality suddenly famous by his discovery. [This account of the naming of Jacksonville and the gold discovery is inaccurate. Jacksonville was named after Andrew Jackson] For many years the town enjoyed a good trade, but Jacksonville lost its opportunity when it permitted the Oregon and California Railroad to pass by on the other side. Medford, a few miles to the northeast, is on the railroad, and takes away the trade that formerly went to Jacksonville, which is now trying to recover it by building a branch road to Medford, which has about two thousand inhabitants.
    Ashland, one of the prettiest towns in Oregon, has, on the contrary, profited by being upon the line of communication between two great states, and is prosperous. It was settled in 1852 by J. A. Cardwell, E. Emery and David Hurley, who, being from Ashland, Ohio, named the place after their old home. It is located where Stuart Creek [i.e., Bear Creek, though Victor is referring to Ashland Creek] comes dancing down from the foothills of the Cascades, offering abundance of water power, and where the view over the whole of Rogue River Valley is delightsome. Its manufactures are lumber, flour and woolen goods.
    The population of Ashland is about three thousand, and there are over a dozen smaller towns in the county, the population of which is fifteen thousand.
Frances Fuller Victor, Atlantis Arisen, 1891 Philadelphia, page 133   This description is substantially the same as one Victor wrote in 1872.


    "California sportsmen can now go up to Oregon and shoot wild cattle," said John Day, an Umpqua mountain pioneer, referring to the completion of the railroad. "It is a fact that there are hundreds of wild cattle in the high hills skirting the Umpqua Valley, and some of them are not more than a couple of miles from the railroad track. Some of these cattle, too, are 25 years old or more. In the mountains near Riddles and Roseburg they are probably the thickest, but they do not venture down in the valley much. They stay in the tops of the hills and get water from the living springs which rise there. For the most part they are concealed in the dense growth of oak and fir in these mountains. There is heavy underbrush, too, so that it is a hard matter to get onto them. They go in bands of six or eight usually, but at night a herd of forty or fifty get together and lie down in the same yard; that is, they sleep on the same spot, which is usually a secluded place among the trees. A band of wild cattle have been known to get together on a cleared place like this every night for a couple of years.
    "When feeding there are always a few bulls to act as sentinels. While the cattle graze in bands of half a dozen or so, they are nevertheless close to other bands, so that at any alarm from any one of the bulls, which leisurely feed on higher ground, they all run away together.
    "The cattle are of all colors and wilder than deer. It is a hard matter to get a shot at them for the reason that their scent is so keen. They can smell a man a long distance off. They got wild in 1853 when the old man Riddles and two or three others of the first settlers came to the valley. Their cows wandered off and could not be found. After two or three years, all the pioneers had to do when they wanted beef was to rig out two or three pack animals and go up into the mountains. The cattle had to be killed on sight the same us deer or bear, for they could no more be driven down than deer could. Once killed they were quartered, packed on the horses, and carried down. They have been hunted a good deal of late years, so that there are not as many as there used to be.
    "Some of the cattle are very large and fat. I have caught glimpses of bulls in the top of the Umpqua hills that astonished me. A bull I saw in the fall of '78 on the head of the Rogue River I am certain would weigh 1,400 pounds. There is good grazing in the mountains all the year round. A peculiarity about these cattle is that their eyes and horns are jet black. The retina, iris and the whole apple of the eye are one mass of black. You can't distinguish any difference in any part of it. The horns, too, while being black as ink, are long and very sharp. Brought to bay, the Oregon wild cattle are very wicked fighters."--San Francisco Examiner.
Inyo Independent, Independence, California, November 13, 1891, page 1


To the Editors of the Enterprise:
    MEDFORD, Oregon, December 8, 1891.--I take this opportunity to write a few lines after reading a piece in your paper today of so many snakes in Klamath County, Oregon. I will say there are no snakes here in Jackson County, in Rogue River Valley. There is a great abundance of fruit and vegetables of all kinds raised; also flowers and roses in bloom the year round. We have traveled a great deal and we find this valley to be one of the finest on the coast. We left our home in Albert Lea the 2nd of November, and as we came through Dakota and Montana we saw a great fall of snow, but after we left Montana the weather was warmer all the way and we arrived in Tacoma about nine o'clock in the morning and it was raining; also at Portland in the evening it was raining. We stopped at Eugene one week and it rained all the time. We then started for Medford where our home is and found it to be [as] beautiful warm weather as one could wish. We have had no rain until the last two days. Grass green, cattle feeding on the hills, farmers are plowing and seeding; apples are not all gathered yet, and the best apples sell at 25 cents a bushel, grapes 1½ cents a pound. We find this to be the place for mild winters. Hoping you will publish this in your paper for me we remain    MR. AND MRS. E. BROWN..
Albert Lea Enterprise, Albert Lea, Minnesota, December 24, 1891, page 8