Our Story

“To make history come alive by collecting, preserving, and sharing the stories and artifacts of our common heritage.”

That is the mission of the Southern Oregon Historical Society. In the past 63 years we have collected and preserved almost a million stories and artifacts. And we have shared them with thousands of children and adults who have visited our museums and programs.

Our Collection represents the pride and the pain of people who have lived in the Rogue Valley. We have baskets from the Native American tribes who no longer exist. We have letters and journals from the first families who arrived in wagons and on foot. We have the tools they used to dig their gardens, and the clothing they wore when they did it. We have treasures that range from the tiniest of fleas to the fanciest of firetrucks.

We have seven unique historical properties including two museums; a house from the 1890s left completely intact; Oregon’s first bank; a tiny, charming Catholic rectory; one of Jacksonville’s first hotels; and a 37-acre Century Farm that still plows the fields with draft horses.

And, in our Research Library, we have photos of the miners and loggers, socialites and visionaries who believed that Jackson County was worth whatever sacrifices they had made to live here.

Of course, we couldn’t have done it without our own group of visionaries – men and women who took a stand in 1946 when people wanted to tear down the old Courthouse in Jacksonville. The railroad had bypassed the town 20 years earlier, a new courthouse was built in Medford, and the two-story brick building on Fifth Street had been left to ruin.

That group became the Southern Oregon Historical Society. And that courthouse is now the Jacksonville Museum -- our home and our heart -- the first artifact collected, preserved and shared, for you.