A tenderfoot
remembers
by
Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Monday,
April 13th 2020
A hundred years ago,
just about everyone knew that the county seat was going to move from
Jacksonville to Medford, and not everyone was happy about it.
Chandler B. Watson,
better known as C.B., had come to Southern Oregon in 1871, nearly 50 years
earlier than his conversation. He said the courthouse move was heart rendering,
just as sad as if a member of the family had been taken away.
 |
| Chandler B. Watson |
“Old Jacksonville, as
I first saw it, comes before me now,” he said, “a moving picture of animation
and energy. I am living again in retrospect, in the presence of that picture,
such a one as will never again be seen except to memory.”
Arriving when he was
barely into his 20s, C.B. had been an active resident. In those 50 years he had
been Jackson County district attorney, Ashland city attorney, editor of the
Oregon Sentinel newspaper, a local historian, and so much more. He had
abandoned his Illinois home and fell in love with Oregon.
 |
| California St., Jacksonville, Oregon |
“For one who had
recently arrived as a tenderfoot,” he said, “a new world was opened and his
young blood was made to tingle as he tried to come into correspondence with his
environment. To such a one there are memories not to be obliterated, and
sentimental preferences he would not suppress.”
C.B. understood that
moving the county seat was in the public’s interest, “in the interest of the
great majority,” he said. Jacksonville’s population had been falling for years.
His only worry was whether the old, brick courthouse would remain standing.
“If you take away the
courthouse, some suitable monument of lasting character should be erected at
the old site.”
He remembered when
Jackson County ran all the way from Goose Lake in today’s Lake County, through
Klamath and Jackson counties, and up to the Josephine County line.
He admired the
resident’s sense of duty and how they responded to a summons or subpoena “with
less complaint than they do today.”
Those were days when
a visit to the county seat might require days and nights of travel and camping.
“A cheerful and uncomplaining attitude was maintained,” he said. “All were
neighbors, though separated by forests and mountains of great extent.”
The county courthouse
in 1871 was a simple wooden structure standing where the brick courthouse still
stands. “The jail was little more than a dugout banked with dirt,” he said.
He was also amused
that Medford would be the new county seat, remembering, “50 years ago
jackrabbits and coyotes held high carnival and sole possession where Medford
now stands. At that time there were not more than two farm houses within what
is now the corporate limits of the present metropolis.”
There were vast open
spaces and only a few tiny villages. Phoenix was second in population to
Jacksonville, and miles of desert separated Central Point from Eagle Point,
where the foundation of a flour mill was being laid.
“There were no
thoughts of railroads,” C.B. said, and the passing of the overland stagecoach
was the chief daily event.
“Roads were little
more than trails. Kerosene lamps and tallow candles furnished the only light at
night and special messengers on horseback performed the duties now obtained
from telegraph and telephone.”
They were all fond
memories for C.B. as he entered his 70th year, but he never was a prisoner of
the past.
“The world is moving
with accelerated speed,” he said, “and we are bound to keep pace with it.
Changes are constantly required in the interest of the great majority, and we
are bound to bow when demands are made.”
 |
| Courthouse, Jackson County, Oregon |
The county seat moved
to Medford in 1927, three years before C.B. died. He would be happy to know,
the brick courthouse still stands.
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.
