History
In the early 19th century, before the first European American settlers arrived, the river valley was inhabited by the Shasta, Takelma, and Rogue River tribes of Native Americans. The early fur traders named this river the "River of the Rogues". A flood of white settlers began to arrive in the valley after the Donation Land Act, which allocated 320 acres (2.6 km²) of land to each married couple. Between 1836 and 1856, the valley was the scene of a series of bloody conflicts between white settlers and the Rogue River tribe. In 1851 gold was discovered in the nearby mountains. The mining activity was centered on the now-restored town of Jacksonville west of Medford. At the peak of the gold rush some $70 million was extracted from the Rogue.
Read more about this topic: Rogue Valley
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)