Jacksonville

Jacksonville was a chance discovery: in January 1852, two pack mule drivers found gold in a creek while watering their animals on the Oregon-California Trail. Within a year, 2,000 miners had staked the hills around the discovery and Jacksonville had become the most significant town in southern Oregon. The gold played out by the 1880s and the railroad went to Medford instead of Jacksonville, effectively freezing the town's development. What remained was a near-complete Victorian and frontier-era commercial and residential landscape that has now been designated a National Historic Landmark the highest federal historic designation, shared with places like Independence Hall. The Jacksonville Museum occupies the 1883 Jackson County Courthouse, the oldest surviving county courthouse in Oregon. The Beekman Bank, opened in 1863, still has its original furnishings and serves as a living museum. The Britt Festivals, held outdoors in a natural amphitheater carved into the hillside above the historic district, are one of the Pacific Northwest's finest summer music programs, presenting classical, jazz, bluegrass, and folk concerts against a backdrop of old-growth Ponderosa pine. Applegate Valley wineries 15 minutes south produce distinctive Syrah and Merlot in a Mediterranean-influenced climate.