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In the summer of 1870, two elderly and frail strangers entered Jacksonville alone and penniless.
Jonathan Davis of Burlington, Iowa, was on his way to see his son in Portland when, somewhere north of Sacramento, he was robbed at gunpoint.
Without money and forced to walk to Oregon, Davis’s ankle became infected. Serious complications set in before he even reached the Siskiyou Mountains. Each nagging step tested his will and ability to continue.
A few weeks earlier, WL Johnson, blind and suffering from a severe cold that filled his lungs with fluid, had also been robbed.
“After taking all the money I had in the world,” he said, “they threw me into the Truckee River, from where, after repeated efforts, I managed to escape.
Davis made it to Jacksonville, where his leg was amputated. That he never saw his son again is not reported.
Johnson was treated by the county doctor. Where he went after that is also a mystery.
In both cases, and in hundreds more, neither man had to pay.
Even before Oregon became a state, Jackson County commissioners awarded a local doctor an annual contract, allowing him to run what they called the county hospital. It was really nothing more than the doctor’s office or house.
In addition to medical services for those who could not afford to pay, the doctor accommodated the sick and disabled, elderly men or women who could no longer work and had no means of subsistence.
The biggest flaw in the system was when the county’s annual contract was awarded to another doctor. Helpless men and women living with a doctor were forced to move to the new doctor’s home or office.
The county also instituted a program that paid a small monthly payment to people who had a place to live but no money to eat. It was a particularly useful plan for widows and elderly widowers who had no family to help.
After nearly 60 years, the county decided to act. In 1907, land north of Talent was purchased and the construction of a real hospital began.
“The poor who have been cared for by the county for so long are now comfortably housed in a large tent,” a newspaper article said, “but it won’t be long before a hospital is ready for their accommodation”.
Finally, those who faced illness, misfortune or whatever else had a safe home and friends. Residents must also have enjoyed the hospital’s hot and cold running water, three indoor bathrooms and electric lights, and, of course, no worries about food.
In 1911, the regents of Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) were ready to set up an experimental station in southern Oregon. It would be part of a statewide network of sites to study the variety of soils, climate and other natural conditions, and the effect they might have on local agriculture.
Twenty acres surrounding the county hospital were set aside for the station, and a two-story superintendent’s house and office was built along the still unpaved road that would become the Pacific Highway.
Officially, the hospital and experimentation station complex was “the county farm”, but it didn’t always work.
“The problem was,” said Jack Hollenbeak, a former resident of Prospect, “everyone called it the poor county farm, which put a mark on it.”
In the late 1970s, as Social Security and other community programs reduced the need for a “poor farm,” the county hospital was repaired and turned over to the Southern Oregon Education Service District.
The county experimental station moved to Hanley Road, and the fallow fields and orchards near Talent soon housed the county’s Community Justice Work Release Center, an animal shelter, and a vehicle maintenance facility.
Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including “History Snoopin ‘,” a collection of his previous columns and stories. Contact him at [email protected].
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