by Bill Miller for
the Mail Tribune
Monday, April 27th
2020
Commemorating local historical events
can get quite dicey at times. Memories fade, people forget, and too often good
intentions and efforts get lost.
On Oct. 19, 1952, a group of about 50
historically motivated people gathered in the Dardanelles Restaurant, on
Highway 99, just across the Rogue River from Gold Hill.
This was the 100th anniversary of the
official opening of Jackson County’s first post office in
William T’Vault registered his 640-acre
donation land claim here in March 1852. He named the area
T’Vault had more than enough experience
for the job. He had led his family and a 300-person wagon train from Missouri
to Oregon in 1845. Two years later, Congress authorized the establishment of
post offices in the Oregon Territory, and, by the end of the year, Oregon had
two post office locations. The first was at Astoria, and the second, in Oregon
City, where T’Vault was postmaster and also editor of the state’s first
newspaper, The Oregon Spectator.
 |
| William T'Vault |
In June 1851, he scouted for Colonel
Kearny who was traveling through the Rogue Valley on his way to a California
army camp. The colonel stopped to defend local miners from Indian unrest. After
a skirmish within today’s Shady Cove, Captain James Stuart was wounded and
died. Some said T’Vault was the person who marked a tree in Phoenix near
Stuart’s temporary grave.
T’Vault’s post office was a popular
place. James Howard, self-proclaimed father of Medford, said, “A very
attractive young lady, Miss Lizzie T’Vault, was the postmistress. There were
more calls to see the young lady than to get mail.” Lizzie was one of T’Vault’s
daughters.
T’Vault’s life ended in 1869, a victim
of Jackson County’s smallpox epidemic.
In 1952, Frank DeSouza, a former
Medford postmaster, led the 100-year commemoration event. He told of the great
struggle to get mail to the settlers in those early days; how many private
carriers carried the mail for as much as a dollar a letter.
DeSouza also announced that as soon as
ODOT laid out an updated Highway 99 across the Rogue River from Gold Hill, a
permanent plaque commemorating T’Vault’s post office would be installed on a
concrete foundation.
It doesn’t appear that the plaque was
ever installed, but if it was, I’m sure I’ll be the first to hear about it.
It was Labor Day, Sept. 7, 1959, when a
commemorative marker was placed and dedicated at the rest area near the updated
Highway 99.
The one-year-old Siskiyou Pioneer Sites
Foundation had paid for a bronze plaque and invited Chris Kenney, a
great-grandson of T’Vault, as their special guest.
With the opening in December 1962 of
the I-5 freeway between Medford and Rock Point, the grass began to grow, and as
cars zipped past Gold Hill, the 1959 marker slowly vanished from almost
everyone’s memory.
However, this story has a happy
conclusion. In 2008, dedicated members of the Umpqua Joe E Clampus Vitus
Outpost, as they call themselves, “the protectors of the heritage of the
American West,” went on safari.
They searched through the brush and brambles
until they located the almost forgotten plaque and arranged for a rededication
at a new location.
Pulled from the weeds of history, the
plaque now stands near Dardanelles Store & Gas, west of the Laurel Hills
Golf Course. Good work, boys!
Writer Bill Miller is the author of
five books, including “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history
columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.
