Monday, August 10, 2026

Jacksonville: Entering History

I got up before the sun this morning to catch a vineyard in that soft early light, before the heat could burn all my energy away. We are in the nineties here, and Jacksonville does not play about summer. Now I am cooled off with a coffee at the Good Bean. I used to sit right here on weekends working through my paralegal homework, and it made for the most pleasant place to learn. The best part is that it has not changed. Same room, same calm, same feeling of being somewhere that takes care of itself. That is the thing about Jacksonville. These are people who stay. They cherish their home and their families, and you can see it in the little things, the clean streets and the sweet unhurried feel of the whole town. It shows. Nora would trust a town like this. So do I. 🌼 Follow the Marigold. 🌼 Melissa

Favorite Coffee Shop

Goodbean Coffee

Southern Oregon’s original and premier coffee roasting company, established in 1990, here in small-town America. GoodBean is still 100% family owned and operated. Housed in Jacksonville’s Table Rock Billiard & Saloon (circa 1852), their national historic building is one of the oldest landmarks in the state of Oregon. Although their roasting and wholesale distribution operations are now housed in a Medford facility, GoodBean’s retail coffee house and bakery is among the finest in the Pacific Northwest. You have to see for yourself why they’ve received gold medals for Best Coffee in Oregon two years running. I love their coffee and spent many weekend hours here studying paralegal classes.

Where I'm Eating

The Farm Stand

I met the loveliest woman at a farm stand today. Johanne and her husband run the cutest little spot, and she was so easy to talk to that we were trading stories inside of five minutes. When she found out I write books, she lit up and handed me a piece of history I did not know I needed. She told me about the Provost cemetery on the hill behind their place. Born in Canada in 1785, Mr. Provost went west as a young man to trade furs and ended up one of the most influential mountain men of his day, though history mostly remembers the flashier names like Jim Bridger. Portly, illiterate, self made. He led expeditions through what is now New Mexico and Utah before settling in Missouri, and his real fingerprint on the map is a city he probably never saw. Provo, Utah, carries his name. The story of how it got there is a hard one, an ambush near the Great Salt Lake in 1824, and the versions do not agree on much. What stayed with me is the footnote most people skip. Another trapper, Peter Skene Ogden, pointed out that a different group of white men had taken horses and furs from those same Shoshone not long before, and a man had died for it. One detail, quietly added, and the whole story turns from a myth into something human. That is the kind of thing Nora lives for. The detail everyone overlooks that changes what the story actually means. I drove off thinking about Johanne, and about how much history hides in plain sight at a roadside farm stand. 🌼 Follow the Marigold. 🌼 Melissa