Southern Oregon Historical Society - Medford, Oregon
Posted by: 
ddtfamily
N 42° 19.654 W 122° 52.382
10T E 510461 N 4686154
Headquarters & Research Library for the region's history center
Waymark Code: WMJ022
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 09/03/2013
Views: 1
This building, with it's distinctive curved entryway and display window, was built in 1948 for J.C. Penney. From 1927 until moving into this new building, Penney's was located across Sixth Street in the Cuthbert Building. The new building provided three times the floor space. Penney's remained here for nearly 40 years, moving in 1986 to become and anchor store in the new Rogue Valley Mall.
Today the building houses the Southern Oregon Historical Society, which remodeled the building while preserving the structure's Moderne department store building style. It contains the society's research library, holding the state's largest repository of archival materials related to the history of Southern Oregon. It is open to the public.
According to the society's website:
"The Southern Oregon Historical Society began in 1946, in response to a proposal 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. People with vision saved the 1875 building and established a museum that served the Rogue Valley until 2010. Over the years, the Society also acquired and maintained the Beekman House, Beekman Bank, U.S. Hotel and Catholic Rectory in Jacksonville, and by preserving them helped to establish Jacksonville as a National Historic District."
"The SOHS collection represents the pride and the pain of people who have lived in the Rogue Valley. We have baskets and tools from the earliest inhabitants. 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 fire trucks."
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