Rogue River - Oregon - History

The first settlers to come into the region were without exception trappers and traders seeking valuable animal pelts. Long before the arrival of white trappers, however, there were several thousand native peoples who lived along the banks. As a matter of fact, the Rogue got its name from the Indians. 'The River of the Rogues,"
Two developments triggered the flood of white settlement: the Donation Land Act, which gave 640 acres to each settling couple, and the discovery of gold along the banks of the Rogue late in 1851. Thousands of miners flooded the area in search of this precious metal.
Today gold-panning is a favorite occupation of many visitors as each year gold is washed down from the mountains in the streams and lodges in gravel and between boulders. In its heyday, over $70 million was taken from the Rogue in gold; $5 million alone from Tyee Rapids by a group of Chinese miners. Gradually, however, the gold dwindled. Since the rugged character of the Rogue prevented it from becoming a highway of commerce and most of the valuable pelts had been trapped out, agriculture became the major industry for the Rogue Valley. Although commercial salmon fishing was once popular, it was outlawed in 1962 when state legislation banned the use of gill-nets. Game fishing remains the major fishing industry today.

In the 1930's the Rogue enjoyed a surge of Hollywood glitter as it became the watchword in fishing for such luminaries as Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Zane Grey and Herbert Hoover. Clark Gable was overheard to say at a star-studded Hollywood dinner "Well, I'd rather be eating flapjacks at the Weasku Inn," an historic inn located by the Savage Rapids Dam. And who can forget that historic jump in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," reputed to have taken place in Hellgate Canyon? Nowadays movies are produced by the score using the dramatic backdrop of the Rogue River, and many big Hollywood names such as Ginger Rogers and Kirstie Alley make the Rogue Valley their home away from home.

In the 1930's the Rogue enjoyed a surge of Hollywood glitter as it became the watchword in fishing for such luminaries as Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Zane Grey and Herbert Hoover. Clark Gable was overheard to say at a star-studded Hollywood dinner "Well, I'd rather be eating flapjacks at the Weasku Inn," an historic inn located by the Savage Rapids Dam.