WINDOWS IN TIME LECTURE SERIES PRESENTS “THE OLD WOOD HOUSE, 1870: ITS HISTORY AND CONSERVATION”
Skip Geear presents April 1 and 8, 2020
Skip Geear will present “The Old Wood House, 1870: Its History and Conservation” on Wednesday, April 1 at the Medford Library, 205 South Central Avenue, and Wednesday, April 8 at the Ashland Library, 410 Siskiyou Boulevard from 12 noon–1:00 p.m. at both locations.
Marvin Sylvester Wood (born in New York in 1836) was a wounded Civil War Veteran; he settled in the Rogue Valley in 1868 and filed a land patent in 1870 to establish a homestead just north of Eagle Point. For 150 years, the Wood House has survived heavy rains, hail, snow, the Columbus Day Storm, fire, vandalism, and County politics. Like the “Phoenix,” however, the Wood House has come back from the dust. Visitors can now appreciate a piece of Eagle Point history and see what western primitive living was like in the late 1800s.
Skip Geear and his wife Charlotte have been involved with the Wood House since 2000 when they belonged to the Eagle Point Historical Society. While at the Society, Skip was Wood House Chairman in charge of refurbishing and preserving the Wood House. When the Eagle Point Historical Society was dissolved in 2008, Skip and Charlotte, along with their daughter Becky, formed the Wood House Preservation Group, a non-profit organization. The Wood House was conveyed to the Wood House Preservation Group by the Eagle Point Historical Society when the Society was officially dissolved.
Since then, the Geear family and volunteers have spent thousands of hours working at the Wood House, adding local historical artifacts inside the house and out for the public to view and enjoy. The Wood House Preservation Group hosts four events at the Wood House each year.
Skip spent most of his working career at the local natural gas company in Medford (originally California Pacific Utilities, now Avista) and Charlotte is a retired schoolteacher from Eagle Point School District 9.
The monthly “Windows in Time” lunchtime lectures are offered free to the public on the first and second Wednesday throughout the year from 12 noon to –1:00 p.m. The Southern Oregon Historical Society and Jackson County Library Services co-sponsor the lecture series. For more information, please contact the Southern Oregon Historical Society at (541) 773-6536 or sohs.org or Jackson County Library Services at 541-774-8679 or jcls.org.