BEATTY, Ore. — This year marks the centennial hundredth anniversary of the founding of a small Klamath County town that may be a wide spot in the road today, but has a colorful history.

“I think it was a bustling little town. What you had was three grocery stores. You had a lot of loggers, and a lot of farmers, cowboys and stuff, and so on. One of the fanciest rodeos in the country,” recalled former Beatty resident Donald Ling.

Donald Ling grew up in the eastern Klamath County town of Beatty, in the ’30′s and ’40′s. Back then, it was a Klamath Indian Reservation town straddling highway 140, never incorporated, about halfway between Klamath Falls and Lakeview. Today it’s not much more than a wide spot in the road with only a small mini-market and deli, and a few houses.

Beatty is named for reverend J.L. Beatty, who was able to get the first post office here in 1913. The first store was in the woodshed of the parsonage, and by 1915 the first real store was built, over the years several other stores have come and gone along the highway. Don Ling says it was a simple life, with few modern conveniences and a real sense of community.

“What I tell people is all we had was rocks, blocks and beer bottles to play with,” said Don. “We had lots of them. We got pretty good at throwing rocks and playing, make a block of wood anything you wanted. It. It could be a bull dozer. It could be a, some kind of truck, whatever you wanted to play with it, you know.”

“Beatty has always been a rodeo community, and lots of cowboys back in the day came through. Old time cowboys was here. I can remember waking up and Slim Pickens would be at our house and Larry Mahan actually lived in this house here,” said Beatty resident Herman Anderson.

“Mostly they were horsebackers. They rode their horse, and then we’d have a lot of rodeos, and I remember going to quite a few rodeos. They had dances down in the big gym and there was quite a few people that were living in Beatty at that time,” recalled Madeline Hutchinson, a longtime Beatty resident.

“They used to have rodeos Sunday here and I’d bring my horses from out where that Klamoya Casino is down there, lived down there, and I’d come on horseback and be here before noon when the rodeo started,” said Beatty cowboy Tinker Kirk.

“It was a nice place, because my husband was a cop. He policed dances about every Saturday night at the old high school gym or grade school gym, that’s now gone. He liked to sit there and watch all the people come and go and drink and dance, and they had a really nice time. Hardly ever had to arrest anybody, and just sit and watch the dances,” recalled Former Beatty resident Velda Smith.

If they did have to arrest somebody, there was a little blockhouse jail in town where rowdies could cool off. That was also torn down several years ago. In 1929, there were three or four stores at one time or another in Beatty, but those are all gone, mostly burned down.

“There’s no more rodeos here. Many of the Indians have died or moved away. My dad built the Palamino Deli. He was a mechanic and that’s evolved from the mech, being a mechanic’s shop to a post office to a store to a deli and mini mart. The others are all closed, or burnt up,” said Shirley Pedersen, a Beatty historian.

“Cookie Walker, she was one of the last owners of the back in the hey-day, her bar burned down, and the restaurant. Just like the other ones. They all burned down. Not sure how. But they’re gone,” Herman said.

Today the gas station is closed. The church is boarded up. A small community center run by the Klamath Tribe is next to the old church with a small playground out back. There’s no school. There is a cluster of tribal houses in the back of the church and a scattering of old vacant buildings who have weathered a lot of cold Beatty winters.

On the hill east of town, a picturesque cemetery overlooking the Sprague River is the final resting place of many local residents. Some of the biggest changes came in the early 60′s with the dissolution of the Klamath Reservation.

“Everybody started moving away,” Madeline recalled. “And then everybody started dying. Dyin’ out! Moving. And moving Beatty especially.”

“It was a different era when they started selling out and people started moving in, wanting big ranches,” Velda said.

“They all had cattle and everybody would big dinner and everything, we’d meet everybody here,” Tinker said. “That’s all and then they ran horses out here, but now there ain’t nobody lives around here!”

But there is a new sidewalk lining the southside of Highway 140.

“When I go through now, I can’t imagine sidewalks being in Beatty,” Don said. “You know, when they told us that, we had to make a special trip out to look and see!”

There are not a lot of the old timers still left around Beatty. The little town has changed and shrunk down quite a bit since the reservation was terminated almost 50 years ago.

“Back in those day you could hitch a ride with anybody,” Don added. “Everybody knew who you were, where you were going and was usually going halfway between. Bly and Beatty to go swimming. Didn’t matter who you were or what you were, or you know it was a family. It was a whole family of people.”

CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. — By the end of this month, the last production sawmill in Josephine County will be shut down. The closure of Rough and Ready Sawmill a few weeks ago caught many people by surprise, but mill owners say it’s been coming for several years under federal timber sale policies.

Lumber trucks are hauling away some of the last lumber produced by Rough and Ready Lumber Company. Long a producer of high quality pine and other sawn wood products, the 90-year old company is forced to close its operation because it cannot keep a steady supply of raw material.

“As logs became scarce we tried to find other ways to, to keep ourselves going on the smaller log scale,” said Jennifer Phillipi. “We really need to run 2 shifts and we need to make more investments in our conventional mill and we just can’t do it because we can’t count on the log supply. It’s been 23 years and there still hasn’t been a solution to this Federal timber controversy and we just can’t wait longer.”

As Phillipi and her family look over photo albums of mill staff get-togethers and historic pictures, they recall how her grandfather and great uncles got started in the lumber business soon after world war one with a small mill near Selma.

“It was Krauss Brothers in Selma, and then they bought an existing mill here in 1943. And my grandmother named it ‘Rough and Ready Mill’ because we’re on Rough and Ready Creek here. My grandma named it Rough and Ready back then,” Phillipi recalled.

Her brother, Joe Krauss, has worked for the company all his life – first as an 8-year-old doing cleanup in the pine lumber yard.

“Us kids would come along with my brother Greg. He’d have a forklift and we’d stack all these blocks and I got paid 50 cents an hour, and that was in about 1972,” Krauss recalled.

Krauss later learned the millwright’s duties and says he had a hand in construction of most every part of the mill as it grew over the last 40 years.

“I grew up with everybody that was out there. Most of the people that I worked with, and work with presently, I went to school with! I went to grade school with some of them,” said Krauss. “I grew up, went to weddings. Went to funerals. It’s part of the community. They are. We are. We all grew up, it’s a family. It’s the Rough and Ready family.”

“The day we had to make our announcement, we just felt like we were breaking up a big family. It was really, really a tragic thing,” said Phillipi.

So, generations of Illinois Valley families have helped Rough and Ready make it when other companies might have gone under. So much so that this is the last production sawmill left standing in Josephine County where once there were dozens.

“We really focused on grade and the quality of our products and so the idea was to get more money out of each piece of lumber instead of needing more logs,” said Phillipi.

Early on the company built a mill just to saw the smaller diameter timber that seemed to be becoming more available, than the traditional mature logs. They also built a co-generation plant to burn wood waste to produce steam for drying lumber and electricity to power the plant.

It was also designed to utilize undersize logs from forest thinning and fuel reduction projects. So now, the last of the dry pine is being surfaced and shipped to customers anxious to get their hands on rough and ready shop lumber. This is the material prized for making window and door frames, moldings and other wood products. And what’s next for the mill?

“If there was another company that had access to timber we don’t have access to, or, had a different formula you know, somebody that wanted to make products for their own consumption,” said Phillipi. “Or you know, somebody else could do it. We would be thrilled to be partners or have then do it, because this community is really important to us.”

Until then, you can almost hear the echo of the saws and other equipment drifting through the mill, even though cleanup crews are picking up the last of the sawdust, sharpening the saws and putting them away. Within a couple weeks, this will all be silent, and 90 years of Illinois Valley history will be shut down. This has been a family business, not just for the Krauss family, but for many of the families of the Illinois Valley.

Jennifer Phillipi says even though the company owns about 25,000 acres of former Medco timberland, it only provides about a fourth of the timber needed to keep the mill running on a financially sound basis.

LAKE OF THE WOODS, Ore. — Now that May is here, many people’s thoughts of outdoor recreation turn to camping and outdoor activities at mountain lakes in our area. One of the most popular mountain lake resorts in Southern Oregon is also one of the oldest.

Fresh in a coat of new red paint, chairs are lined up along the shore near the swimming beach at Lake of the Woods resort. The docks are all in place and some of the boats are freshly painted and ready to rent for the summer. This is the 91st year lake of the woods resort has opened its doors to people seeking fresh mountain air, and all the other experiences that lure people to a pristine mountain lake.

“We typically work on the opening preparations the latter part of April and May weather dependent, but last year we had so much snow that we had kind of a late start. This year we have Aspen campground open early,” says George Gregory, Resort Owner-Manager. “The resort is looking better than ever, and we have our docks. And we have a few more boats to get ready. And a few more preps for the summer season. But we’re really happy with the weather, and just the number of people that are coming up too.”

Lake of the Woods has been an attraction for the adventurous for more than a hundred years. Actually, in 1870 it’s reported that Captain Applegate named the lake and built a cabin. There are now more than 200 cabins around the lake.

“In 1998, when I came to work up here, we had 8 rental cabins. And now we have 32! Um, the RV Park has been completely remodeled. We are in the middle of a multi-year remodel of the main lodge restaurant,” says George. “And just improving the facilities overall. Last year we built a, a gazebo down by the lakeshore for weddings, special events, and uh, eventually hope to maybe even have music down there.”

George Gregory says some of the original cabins are still there and in use.

As George Gregory recalls: “Our first cabin, cabin number three, we found some evidence in the old files that it was built in approximately 1922. That’s where the 91 years comes in. the resort permit was first issued a couple years later, but there was a trading post here. Just a sawmill, and the area’s actually been, uh, in use by early settlers and explorers since 1870. By the early 1900′s there were residences popping up around the lake. And there are currently 217 summer homes. 3 organizational camps. The 3 forest service facilities, Aspen Point campground, Rainbow bay, and Sunset campground as well as the resort! And all the facilities here have been in high use since the 20′s.”

The lodge was rebuilt after a fire in 1949 or 1950, but the store, the marina building all are original.

“There used to be a pier that went out there. Large timbered pier and then it had a floating portion. And that was constructed in about 1924 and the boat launch actually was on the other side of the building what we have as the swim beach now,” George says.

Getting here was not always easy. There was no direct road from the Rogue Valley, except for Dead Indian Memorial Road until Highway 140 was finished in the early 1960′s.

“Speaking with one of the old homeowners from Klamath Falls used to be 2 days in the Model “T” to drive up here in the 30′s and sometimes you had to fix the road to get here,” George says.

Now, Lake of the Woods is within an hour’s drive or less, from both the Klamath Basin and Rogue Valley, winter or summer. 90 years ago when the Lake of the Woods resort first started, you probably wouldn’t have seen much in the way of any kind of power boats on the lake.

Now you see everything from fishing boats and, later in the summer, when things warm up a little bit, you’ll see a lot of water skiers out here as well. And with homes on the West shore and around the South end of the lake, this is a place that draws thousands of people every weekend.

Lake of the Woods also manages the three forest service campgrounds at the lake, and is currently refurbishing the old guard station near the Westside road junction to be used as a rental facility as well.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — For five months now, a lot of attention has been focused on the murder trial of a former Yreka woman, Jody Arias, in Arizona. The defense in the trail argues that the killing of her boyfriend was in self defense.

The case brings to mind a similar trial in Grants Pass which occurred almost 20 years ago when a Josephine County woman was tried for the murder of her estranged husband whom she claimed mentally and physically abused her. In this case, the suspect Margaret Biggs, argued that she too was really the victim.

Josephine County was rocked in April of 1994 by the murder of Tom Briggs at this house in the Cathedral Hills area south of Grants Pass. There was no doubt that he was shot by his estranged wife, Margaret Whitney Biggs. The two had been sharing this house for some time, but he lived downstairs while she occupied the top floor.

Former District Attorney Clay Johnson explains their relationship, “She had him sign a contract where he had to live in the bottom of the house the he gave to her. There was a locked door between the lower level and he was not to go through that door. If they ever went anyplace in the car, he had to sit in the back seat.”

It was apparently a precarious arrangement that erupted in gunfire in April of 1994.

“He had come up around and from the basement entrance, and apparently knocked on the door, and they probably had coffee together,” Clay says. “He wanted to take the vacuum downstairs and she didn’t want him to; maybe they tussled over the vacuum cleaner or maybe it was self inflicted. She changed the scene. She took the vacuum cleaner away and put a knife next to his body.”

When police arrived, Margaret Biggs had a big bruise on her face, and other bruises on her body she said came from her husband hitting her. Police found 15 spent rounds from an AK-47 rifle and a dead Tom Biggs on the stairway. The case went to trial about six months later and lasted almost all of November.

“This was a very long case for Josephine County,” Clay says. “It lasted almost a month as I recall. There was clearly a lot of media interest, statewide media interest. It was interesting to the public because the defense hired the guru on women’s domestic violence, Lenore Walker. She was a national figure and had written several books.”

To prepare for her testimony, Clay read her books, including “The Battered Woman Syndrome” and “Learned Helplessness.” Something that he sees as similar to the Jody Arias case.

“It was a little troubling, in reading all of that about how men are marginalized as victims and men cannot be victims in domestic violence situations. If a man was murdered by his wife or his partner, then it must be his fault. That theory ran through her writings and all of the research I had to do. That was very troubling.”

Lenore believes, “A woman doesn’t get attention by the courts when she could prevent the homicides, and should she commit homicide to try and protect herself, then very often the vengeance against her is seen in these courtrooms across the country.”

The state brought in it’s own expert to challenge Walker’s assessment of Margaret Biggs’ motivation. Rebuttal witness Dr. Alice Brill commented, “The major problem is anger, not depression.”

Once the case went to the jury, after a month of testimony, it took jurors less than an hour to convict Margaret Biggs of murder. Defense Attorney Tom Hauser was shocked, “When you get to the jury system it strikes me that some consideration is of what the evidence is, and some consideration of what the dynamics of this relationship here is necessary.”

“In the space of time that the jury gave to my client, they couldn’t have discussed anything. They had to have their mind made up well before they walked into the jury room.”

“You know Tom Biggs was a victim,” Clay says. “He was a lonely man and got himself into a bad situation with her. She had a terrible temper. She had outbursts in court a couple times and he was a lonely man and a victim. He there needed to be justice for him and so it was very gratifying that the jury was able to see that.”

It’s been nearly 20 years since Margaret Biggs killed her husband at their home in Grants Pass. She was convicted and sent to prison for murder where she is serving a 20 year sentence at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility near Portland. Biggs is due for possible release in April of 2015, almost exactly 21 years after the murder. The question still remains, can men become victims or are they usually the aggressor?

TALENT, Ore. — Monday marks the one hundredth anniversary of one of the darkest days for law enforcement in Southern Oregon; it also marks the day a legend was created.

Diane Walker is one of 28 grandchildren of former Jackson County Sheriff August Singler. Singler has the dubious honor of the being the first lawman killed in the line of duty in Jackson County, and one of the first in Oregon.

Some say that had he survived he may have equaled the fame of the legendary Wyatt Earp a generation before. 36-year old August Singler rode into the sheriff position on a wave of popular support in the 1912 election. He used a campaign promise like no other.

“In fact, the Ashland Record noted that he was the only candidate in the election that said he was running for the job because he wanted the job and he wanted to feed his 8 kids,” said Singler Historian, Andy Nillson

“People really liked him because he had such a sense of humor, and he was always willing to help,” said Diane Walker. “They said that the Singler children kept the people aroused during the day, and the bloodhounds kept them awake at night!”

Singler already had a reputation as a tough, smart lawman. Local newspapers referred to him as “super sleuth” and “Sherlock Holmes.” When a 19-year old local tough guy named Lester Jones showed up in town, Singler decided to make the arrest himself. Nobody else wanted to do it. So, early in the evening of April 22nd, 1913, Singler and a neighbor drove out to this property, just south of Jacksonville, where Jones was holed-up in a small cabin.

“And there were three steps leading up to the front door, and as he walked up those steps and opened the door, Jones fired the first time and hit the sheriff under the left arm,” Nillson described. “The bullet passed through his body, puncturing both lungs. I think the sheriff fell off of the steps, maybe fell all the way to the ground, but returned fire, and emptied his revolver – six shots – and hit Jones with all 6 shots. Jones in the meantime was firing back at him, and probably falling from being hit. Hit Singler one more time in the right hand and then collapsed to the floor of the cabin, and he died at the scene.”

Sheriff Singler managed to stumble back down to his friend before collapsing on the ground. He was rushed to the new, modern sacred heart hospital in Medford. Doctors managed to remove the bullet from his right side, proclaiming the surgery a success. This is the shirt he was wearing at the time, still with the bullet hole in the left side.

“According to what my mom said, that he knew his wounds were fatal. They, they operated on him in hopes they could save him,” said Diane.

But Sheriff Singler died in the morning after being wounded. He left a wife, 8 kids and two hound dogs. The whole county mourned and the largest funeral ever in Jackson County wound its way 12 blocks through Medford to the IOOF Cemetery. Diane walker says he was very selfless, and was always ready to act when and where he saw a need.

“My grandmother always said that’s possibly a reason he got shot because he was, when he decided to do something, we went out and did it, and he might not have taken as much caution as what he should have,” Diane said.

Diane also said his death devastated his family. They were living in a small house behind the old jail at the time. Singler’s brother took over as sheriff, but the county offered little support, and many in Jacksonville were not supportive of his widow either.

“Mom said they’d come to the door, some ladies would knock on the door and say, ‘You can’t raise that many children. You can’t do this,’ and mom said Grandma would start crying and all the kids would be gathered around her skirts and they’d all be crying and hiding under her skirts. It was pretty sad. It was devastating.”

But she did raise those kids, and today the sheriff and his widow leave a legacy that they’d be proud of. It was a hundred years ago this weekend that Lester Jones and Sheriff August Singler faced off in a furious gunfight at a cabin near the edge of the woods, just outside of Jacksonville. Both men ended up dying, but Sheriff Singler is remembered today by a memorial plaza between the jail and the Jackson county justice building.

Sheriff Singler only served as sheriff four months before he was shot and died in April 1913. He is reportedly the first lawman in this area to use fingerprinting as a crime fighting tool, and introduced the use of bloodhounds to track suspects and missing persons. Singler is the great-great grandfather of former South Medford basketball standout players Kyle and E.J. Singler.

MEDFORD, Ore. — The Masters Golf Tournament is underway at the prestigious Augusta National Golf Course in Augusta, Georgia this weekend and as the days get longer and warmer, more and more golfers are heading out onto the courses around our area as well.

Spring in the rogue valley and the golfers are flocking to courses all over the region. For ninety years, the premier course has been the rogue valley country club and its genesis can be traced back to the turn of the century when a pipe smoking orchardist wannabe, Henry Chandler Egan, landed in the Rogue Valley, with his golf bag in tow.

Egan was one of the top names on the national amateur circuit then. He came to the Rogue Valley with the wave of money men from the east and mid-west in the decade before world war one, and left his mark as a class act seldom seen since.

At the turn of the century, as a member of the Harvard Golf Team, along with his cousin Walter, they became Harvard Golf Hall of Famers. In 1904 and 1905 chandler won the U.S. amateur titles, just two of the many titles he won in his lifetime, but soon after he arrived in the rogue valley, he was drafted to help design the Medford golf and country club course.

At first it started with a nine-hole course on Hillcrest road. Then it moved to a site near Egan’s orchard off delta waters, but then in 1923, the Rogue Valley Golf Association was formed and chandler went to work laying out a bigger and better course back at the Hillcrest site. Egan was the driving force in making it happen.

Through it all, he was the consummate amateur and golf purist. Local historian Bill Miller likes to tell the story of the 1921 U.S. amateur, when Egan had a chance to win.

He writes: “on the 16th green, with pipe clenched in his teeth and perspiration dripping from every pore, Chan reached down to his golf ball. He lifted the dimpled sphere, removing the obstacle from his opponents putting line. His rival’s putt plopped into the cup as Chan examined a large blob of mud stuck to his ball–large enough to be seen by nearly every spectator around the green. There was an audible gasp from the crowd as Chan placed the ball on the green exactly as he had found it, with the mud blob facing the blade of his putter. Didn’t he know the rules?

“He had the right to clean the ball…but Chandler Egan was a golfing traditionalist and played to a higher set of laws. The ancient rule of golf he followed was, “play the ball as it lies.” His stroke was firm and the ball wobbled toward the hole, but it stopped short. Henry Chandler Egan, or Chan, as friends and the newspapers called him, was eliminated from the championship rounds by one stroke. Had he cleaned the ball and made the putt, perhaps he would have been U.S. amateur champion for the third time.”

Throughout his life, he shied away from matches with prize money, preferring to remain an “amateur”. There were few real professionals in those days. In fact the prize money was hardly worth the trouble. They were worth usually, just a couple hundred dollars. Although he designed the first Medford course, his course designing really took off with the east Moreland course in Portland in 1917.

His most famous project was the redesign of the pebble beach course near Monterey in 1928. That may be where he became friends with the legendary Bobby Jones. In 1936, Egan was working on a course in Everett, Washington, where he contracted pneumonia and soon died.

A year later, Jones and other golfing greats came to Medford to dedicate this fountain and bronze plaque in Egan’s honor at the country club. That same year, the U.S. Amateur Tournament came to Portland. Today, Egan’s golf bag and clubs are on permanent display at the Rogue Valley Country Club, along with trophies, and the plaque naming him to the Golf Hall of Fame is also there.

At the time Chandler Egan was playing and designing golf courses, he may have considered himself an amateur, but everything he did was professional quality and his legacy lives on today at the Rogue Valley Country Club. One of the great golfers of all time, and his name is attached to the Rogue Valley.

Bill Miller notes that in April 1936, shortly after Chandler Egan died, the Portland Oregonian said, “it is not hero worship to admire him, nor flattery to praise and when to these attributes is added that of an instinctive gentility, you may well say, ‘yonder goes a gentleman,’ such was Chandler Egan.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — In a little over a week, we should know who will be the king of college basketball for another year, with the NCAA champion crowned. The Oregon Ducks won’t be it, but they did make a good run in the tournament after years of little playoff experience. 74 years ago, it was the Ducks who were the first NCAA champions. In this Oregon Trails, NewsWatch 12′s Ron Brown takes a look back at the team that made many Oregonians proud. They called them “The Tall Firs.”

A claim to be the first is always something special, and for University of Oregon basketball, the honor goes back to the waning days of the Great Depression when the clouds of war were on the horizon. The Oregon Ducks basketball team is one of those that comes along once in a generation, it seems. Made up entirely for guys from Oregon and Washington, they became Pacific Coast champions in 1939, and won the right to play in the inaugural NCAA basketball tournament. The team was made up of 6’8″ senior center Slim Wintermute of Longview, Washington.

Forwards Laddi Gale of Oakridge, Oregon and John Dick of The Dalles were both 6’4″. That front line led to the “Tall Firs” nickname. They played in the old MacArthur court, and while the team did have a height advantage, they were also fast – for the time. Keep in mind, this was just a couple years after the center jump after each basket was done away with. Coach Howard Hobson used guards Bobby Anet and Wally Johansen of Astoria to run the early version of a fast break offense.

The Ducks had five members of the 1938 team that reached the Pacific Coast conference championship game, and four were seniors, John Dick was the only junior of the starting five. To give the team experience, Coach Hobson took them on an east coast trip early in the season, playing eight games in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. That was the first time a west coast school had made such a trip. A two point loss to city college of New York, and a loss to Bradley, and then a loss to Stanford in San Francisco led to a ten game winning streak in conference play.

By the end of the season, they were 24 and 5 overall with a 14 and 2 conference record. They then swept the conference title series, sending them to the NCAA west regional in San Francisco. There they beat Texas 56-41, and Oklahoma 55-37. There were only ten teams in that inaugural series.

The title game was March 2l7th at Patten Gym on the Northwestern University campus, against Ohio State. Five thousand fans packed the gym for that game. The buckeyes were not able to stop the combination of Gale and Wintermute, and John Dick who pumped in 15 points in a 46-33 win and the title. The Ducks led by five at halftime.

Ohio State only shot 17 percent for the game. Afterward came what Dick called “a two-handed trophy presentation”. That’s because during the game, Anet had broken a figure off the top of the championship trophy while attempting to get possession of the ball along the sideline! So, with the first ever NCAA trophy in hand, the Ducks returned by train to Eugene to hundreds of adoring fans.

Coach Hobson was inducted in the basketball hall of fame in 1965, and Gale followed a dozen years later. The entire team is in the Oregon sports hall of fame, and Anet, Dick, Gale, Hobson, Johnsen and Wintermute were inducted as individuals. All five of the team’s starters have had their numbers retired by the university.

Oh, and that new floor at Knight Arena on the U of O campus, with its fir tree shadows around the edge of the floor? That is reportedly partially in honor of that 1939 team that will always be remembered as the “tall firs.”

The nick-name “tall firs” was coined by legendary Oregonian sports Writer L.H. Gregory in 1939, for the tall size, at least for that time. He is also credited for first using the name “webfoots” for Ducks teams. Gregory is also credited with coining the moniker “Black Tornado” for Medford High School after a convincing win over a Portland High School. Medford later adopted the nick-name, replacing the old “tigers” title.

MEDFORD, Ore. — These days e-mail, texting and twitter are common ways to get someone a message, but not too long ago the ultimate message medium was air-mail. Airmail revolutionized communication and opened the door to the vast air transportation system we have today.

A United Air express jet taking off from the airport is a far cry from the time in the 1920′s when surplus World War I trainers carried bags of mail and occasional passengers up and down the Pacific Coast and across the country. Being mid-way between San Francisco and Seattle and Portland without its own airport, Medford became a key stop for the mail plane pilots and they flew by the seat of their pants in open cockpit planes just a little above the treetops.

At first, the pilots and planes were government issued. Then in 1926, Congress opened it up to private companies to contract for mail and passenger service. Bill Boeing got the routes from Chicago to San Francisco, and Seattle to San Diego. Pacific Air Transport, with offices in Medford was the result, and a new plane, the Boeing model 40, went into production in 1928 to carry the mail and a few passengers whenever possible.

On October 2nd, 1928, pilot Grant Donaldson lifted off from Medford headed to Portland with a few pounds of mail and a diamond salesman, D.P. Donovan. The plane and Donovan never made it. Donaldson survived the crash but never flew mail again. He became an airline executive instead the wreck was recovered by the Oregon Air History Museum in the 1980′s, then sold to Addison Pemberton of Spokane. In February of 2008, the plane took its maiden flight. Pemberton has flown it to New York to re-trace the original air mail route, and has made several appearances up and down the Pacific Coast.

Boeing, and Pacific Air Transport eventually joined with some other airmail carriers in the 1930′s to become United Airlines. The airmail business led to passenger business and the rest is history, but the restored plane is unique, and it brings back memories of the time when pilots flew by the seat of their pants and passengers had to hang on.

Little over 80 years ago, when the airmail business was just taking off in this country, this is where the airport was for Medford and Jackson County. It was the primary mail stop between San Francisco and Seattle, and that was one of the reasons that United Air Lines got its roots in the Rogue Valley.

MEDFORD, Ore. — Telephone rings have changed a lot in the last hundred years, and so has telephone service. The first phones came to southern Oregon in the mid-1890s, about 20 years after Alexander Graham bell was granted a patent for the telephone.

The Jacksonville Times in July of 1894 reported that “arrangements have been perfected for the construction of a telephone line between Jacksonville and Medford and construction is being pushed rapidly at this writing. Mr. Kerr proposes to have it in operation within a few weeks.”

The paper goes on to predict that if it is financially successful, lines could soon extend to Ashland, Eagle Point and other places. It also notes that there will be three phones to start with: One at the court house, which was then in Jacksonville; at Reames, White and Company’s Store in Jacksonville; and Haskin’s Drug Store in Medford.

A month later, the Medford Mail reported the Rogue River valley telephone company had decided to extend lines to Ashland, Phoenix and Talent. The Mail, however, also reported that a judge put the kibosh on a phone in the courthouse, saying he wouldn’t have the new-fangled device there under any consideration. Meanwhile, the Mail noted that “the telephone connections are surely going to prove of great value to the cities and towns of the valley.”

Within a decade, phone lines were being stretched all across the country, including Southern Oregon. Not many people had phones. It was relatively expensive to make a call. Most were in stores or professional offices. Phone books from the first decade of the 20th century show that calls cost about as much for three minutes as many people earned in an hour of work.

They also show toll stations, where you could come to place a call if you did not have a phone in your home or business. In a 1903 Medford Success Newspaper, the names and phone numbers of subscribers are listed. Later, when AT&T and Pacific Bell began taking over small local phone companies, phone books like this were published.

At the turn of the 20th century, one house in Gold Hill was the home of the telephone exchange. It wasn’t until the late 50′s and early 60′s that telephone customer were able to start dialing on their own and didn’t have to go through an operator. By then telephone equipment had moved to a new building.

A display in Jacksonville shows what a small community exchange often looked like. Larger offices would have several operators. An article from an early Medford Mail Tribune notes that demands on the “hello girls” was getting too much, and reduced service would be put in to effect.

“Typically, these were party lines, where you had perhaps ten houses or ten farms on one line, and it was necessary to assign codes to the ringing,” explained Lud Sibley, an antique phone historian. “A particular farm would be a short ring followed by along ring, to distinguish it from its neighbors and that was tradition for up into the 50′s, actually!”

Dial phones started showing up in the late 1920′s. This AT&T training film from that time demonstrates how to use the “new” self-dialing equipment. Dial phones started showing up in the Rogue Valley in the late 30′s but it wasn’t until the mid-50′s that customers could direct-dial between communities in the Rogue Valley.

Lud Sibley says, as of 1903, there were about 1,500 little farmer phone companies, just in Oregon.

“Did their own maintenance, not necessarily very well,” Lud says. “It was sort of apart-time thing for them. That’s how it worked.

When the direct dialing system arrived in the mid-fifties here, phone numbers grew a couple more digits as well. Each city was assigned its own prefix. Gold hill was “ulrich”, with a “u-l”, or “8-5″ in front of the old number. Medford was “spring”, adding “s-p” or “7-7″. Central point was “normandy”, which added a “66″ to the former number. Jacksonville added “t-w” for “twinoaks”. Ashland was “murdock”, adding an “m-u”, and phoenix was “keystone”, or “k-e.”

Today, we now dial an area code as well, even for local calls, because so many phones are in service, and a new area code had to be added this year.

MEDFORD, Ore. — A former Medford City Councilman says the city of Medford pays almost a million dollars a year to light city streets – that’s a long way from the 1880′s when a few coal oil lamps were considered sufficient to light the streets at night.

For the romantic in many of us, there’s nothing like being on a hillside someplace and watching the sun go down, and the soft glow of street lights appear across the valley below, but it wasn’t that way all that long ago. It’s probably safe to say that the first priorities as cities developed was streets, water and sewer, and then maybe street lights.

Jacksonville is our area’s oldest town, but while the lights here may look antique, they’re just reproductions of old oil or gas lights. In fact, in the late 1960′s, Jacksonville placed several gaslights on wooden columns downtown to simulate the feel of days past. They’re all electric replicas now. Cheaper to operate and maintain. It may seem nostalgic now, but early street lighting really was not very good.

“There was a constant drumbeat from the newspapers about…one phrase they used was, ‘it was dark as a stack of black cats at night,’” described historical researcher Ben Truwe. “One time in [I] think 1886, one of the newspapers published a poem, ‘Dear council, give us streetlights, and give them to us soon, or we’ll go to Central Point and dance by the light of the moon!’”

Actually, early streetlights were not much better than moonlight, even the first electric lights. One report says that during that part of the month when the moon was full, you could expect the street lights to be turned off because they weren’t considered necessary, what with all that bright moonlight.

“You want to keep in mind that the definition of a street light was a lot different back then,” Truwe described. “When Medford first got streetlights in 1889, they were coal oil lamps and there were just a few of them on street corners. So, they’re putting out a very, very faint, sickly glow at night.”

In fact, old pictures of downtown Medford and most other towns in our area before the turn of the century don’t show much in the way of anything that really looks like a street light.

“Horses don’t need streetlights,” said Truwe. “They can see pretty well in the dark and the stated purpose of a street light was to define the perimeters of the street. So, you could tell about where the street was. It just…you didn’t expect to go out at night and see it as bright as brightly lit as day the way we expect today.”

The papers of the day, for several years, continued to carry cries for better street light lighting. After a few years of coal oil lamps, electricity got a try, mostly in the form of arc lights, usually hanging in the middle of an intersection from overhead.

“When Medford got electricity in 1893, that was generated by a power plant on Riverside, just off Main, and that was a steam-powered plant. So it was a mechanical plant, and it broke down occasionally, and they would have go without electricity until it was on again. Even when it was operating, it wasn’t operating 24 hours a day. For a while, it shut off at 11 o’clock at night. So, it wasn’t all that dependable, even when it was operating it wasn’t all that bright,” said Truwe.

After a while, cities in Medford, Klamath Falls, and Grants Pass began to switch from arc lights, which were few and far between, to incandescent electric bulbs placed more closely together. Soon, those gave way to clusters of those bulbs that have been replicated in several area towns in recent years.

“Even when Medford got its much-vaunted cluster lights, they had 3 light bulbs in each of them. We have a few photos that were taken at night,” said Truwe. “Well, they weren’t so brightly lit, because each of those light bulbs was 40 watts! So you’ve got three 40-watt bulbs on each, it’s not what we would consider a street light today.”

Early photos of Grants Pass and Klamath Falls show similar lite fixtures from the teens and 20′s. In some places, large, single globes started showing up as incandescent bulbs of two or three hundred watts became available. Real improvement starting showing up in the 40′s and 50′s with newer, higher powered lighting that really did make some streets and parking lots almost seem like daylight. These views of Medford were taken in the 50′s. In fact, Medford was recognized in a national trade magazine for its efforts to improve downtown lighting. These before and after photos are evidence of the difference between the old and new.

In a storage building in Jacksonville, Truwe showed NewsWatch12 six cast iron light fixtures that were originally in Medford’s Hawthorne Park when it was built in the late ’40′s. The glass globes are gone but the rest of the standard are still there. And downtown, replicas of old style lights line some city streets as a nostalgic reminder of the past. But when those were the only lights, few people today would probably want to rely on them to get around in the dark, when it really was dark, even with the few lights available. The Medford Public Works Department says the city of Medford has about 6,500 street lights.