When is a Pass not much of a Pass

How did Grants Pass, Oregon, get its name?

Most people travelling through Grants Pass, Oregon, don’t give the city’s name a second thought. But a “Pass”? The City is in a valley two miles wide by 10 miles long, where the Rogue River takes one of its few calm breaks on its mad dash from the Cascade Range to the Pacific Ocean (Figure 1). The only natural feature called a pass near the city is Sexton Mountain Pass, 13 miles north of the city.

What’s the story behind the name? Where is the “Pass”, if any, and why is it named “Grants Pass”?

Figure 1 Aerial view of Grants Pass region

The quick answer is that the city was named in honor of Union Army General Grant’s July 4, 1863 victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi, during the Civil War [1]. But there’s more to the story. For example, the city was not incorporated until 1887, 24 years after Vicksburg. And this doesn’t explain the “pass” part of the name.

The story involves a road crew in a celebratory lunch-time mood, a Union sympathizer, and the expanding use of the name from a stage station to a post office, a railroad station, and eventually the city.  

Let’s start with the road crew. In 1863, just north of the present city of Grants Pass, the crew was constructing a new alternative route to the historic Applegate, or Southern Emigrant, Trail (Figure 2). This trail had been an important historical route for trappers and early emigrants, connecting California to the Umpqua and Willamette River Valleys. Coming from the south, the Trail met the Rogue River near today’s Gold Hill and then followed the south side of the river downstream for  14 miles to today’s Grants Pass area. At this point, the trail crossed the Rogue River and turned north [2].

Figure 2 Applegate Trail near Rogue River. Excerpt from [18].

Three miles north of the river crossing, the trail passed through a low gap in the hills (about 700’ above the river) and then descended to Louse Creek*. From there it continued north to Sexton Mountain Pass and the Umpqua and Willamette River Valleys. Today’s Granite Hill Road follows that route (Figure 3).

* The name referred to an Indian camp along the creek that was infested with lice. Sporadic attempts were made in the late 1800s to change the name to something more pleasant, but they didn’t go anywhere [9].

Figure 3 Hills and “passes” north of Grants Pass.

This trail was initially laid out as a wagon route in 1846. But the influx of people with the 1851 Gold Rush rapidly changed things. Joel Perkins established the Perkins Ferry (commonly known as the ‘middle ferry’) in 1851 where most people crossed the Rogue River (probably located near where modern Highway 199 crosses the river [3]). The crossing was informally known as Perkinsville for several years [4].  Perkins sold his ferry to Ben Halstead and Edward Woolsey for $1500 in 1852 [5].

Figure 4 An example of early Oregon ferries. Hall’s Ferry South of Salem, Oregon in 1906 [19].

The U.S. Army also resolved in 1851 to build a military road from Scottsburg, near the head of tidewater on the Umpqua River, to Camp Stuart, an Army fort near today’s town of Medford, following the old emigrant trail [6]. Congress appropriated  $120,000 in 1852-53 to construct the road, which was completed in 1858 as the Southern Oregon Military Road [7].

This new road enabled the California Stage Co. to launched its first long-distance stage run between Portland and Sacramento on September 15, 1860. It was the second-longest daily stage- coach run in the United States at 710 miles for $50 and six days of travel. A song about the journey joked: “They promise when your fare you pay, you’ll have to walk but half the way. Then add aside, with cunning laugh, ‘You’ll have to push the other half’” [8].

In the early 1860s, Halstead and Woolsey sold their Rogue River ferry to Thomas Croxton.  Thomas Croxton, who had come to this area with his family in 1857, prospecting for gold, was a strong supporter of building better roads in the area. He had political aspirations and soon became the Public Administrator for Josephine County. He was a strong advocate for the Union during the Civil War, and he ran unsuccessfully  on the Josephine County Union Ticket for County Judge in May 1862 (Oregon Sentinel articles 1860-1864).  

In 1863, Croxton served on a local committee advocating to turn the military road into a public road (Oregon Sentinel articles 1860-1864).  Historical accounts are unclear about this, but Croxton and his colleagues’ work may have secured funding to re-route the old wagon road over Granite Hill to an easier and lower grade over Merlin Hill, one mile to the west where today’s I-5 highway crosses the ridge.

While the new route was being constructed, word reached southern Oregon General Grant’s July 4, 1863 victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi. During a lunch break , after a hard morning of carving the road over the pass of Merlin Hill, one of the road crew suggested celebrating the victory by naming the pass “Grant’s Pass” [2] [9].

This was the first use of the name “Grant’s Pass” in this area, even though the “pass” was just a simple gap in the hills less than 400 feet above the Rogue River crossing.

Figure 5 Ulysses S. Grant, 1863. [20]

In 1864, Thomas Croxton established a stagecoach station at the Rogue River crossing in 1864,  known as either Croxton’s Station [10] or Grant’s Pass Station [11]. His son-in-law, Ebenezer Dimmick, operated the next station north, on Louse Creek [10] [2] [9].

Still pushing for more settlement, both Croxton and Dimmick wanted to establish a post office at the Grant’s Pass stage station, since the  nearest post office was 14 miles up the Rogue River in Point Rock (near today’s Gold Hill). They petitioned the US Post Office Department, hoping to name it simply “Grant”,  given that both of them had been Union supporters during the Civil War. But this name was denied because there   already was a Grant, Oregon post office. Croxton changed the post office’s name to “Grant’s Pass” [2] and it  was formally established on March 22, 1865.  Croxton was appointed the first postmaster, with Dimmick taking over in 1868 as second postmaster [9].

Some people may claim that Croxton initiated the name “Grant’s Pass”, but a local source says that Dimmick named the pass earlier than the post office [12]. And, assuming that the road crew story is accurate, Dimmick himself was probably just following up on the road crew’s initial suggestion. Someone should’ve tracked the name of that road crew member to give him the credit for starting the whole naming process.

The shift in the route put an end to the Louse Creek stage station. Dimmick eventually took over operating the Grant’s Pass stage station until the end of the stage days. Nothing remains of the station, but Croxton’s home is still standing (built in 1866) at 1002 Northwest Washington Boulevard in Grants Pass  [10].

Now comes the railroad station part. The Oregon-California Railroad line (now Southern Pacific) was completed from Portland to Grants Pass on December 2 , 1883 and to Ashland on May 4 , 1884 [13]. The railroad found an even lower route over the hills north of Grants Pass, shaving off another 100’ of elevation by crossing one mile west of Merlin Hill. A new railroad station, the Grant’s Pass Railroad Station, was built here. The postmaster moved the Grant’s Pass post office about ¾ mile south to a new store near the railroad station [11]. The present community developed around that railroad station and took its name from the post office [14].

And finally, in 1887, the City of Grant’s Pass was incorporated, apostrophe and all, 24 years after General Grant’s victory at Vicksburg. The apostrophe was eventually dropped after 1900 [1].

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Figure 6 Southern Pacific Railroad bridge over Rogue River near Grants Pass, Oregon, circa 1906 [21]

Despite the general consensus of the origin of the city’s name, back in the 1920s several other stories circulated. One story claimed was that the name commemorated a visit by General Grant. But Grant never visited that part of Oregon. He was stationed at Fort Vancouver, where he arrived in September 1852 by sea from San Francisco. In September 1853, he was promoted to serve as a captain of a company then stationed at Humboldt Bay, California, but he sailed there from Fort Vancouver, never passing through the Rogue River valley [14]. A second story, since dismissed, come from McArthur’s 1926 research, in which he cited Leslie M. Scott’s 1924 History of the Oregon Country. Scott said that that the pass through the mountains north of the present town of Grants Pass may have been named for a settler in that vicinity named Grant.

Toponymist (geography name fans) Trivia:

Three other places in the U.S. are named Grants Pass:

• Grants Pass in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. A real mountain pass at 8028’ elevation along the Continental Divide Trail
• Grants Pass in Mobile County, Alabama. A channel that separated Dauphin Island from the mainland near Mobile Bay.
• Grants Pass in Louisiana. A sea-level slough in the Mississippi River Delta

The name “Grant” is used for about 400 geographic features in the U.S., including 118 townships (in 13 states), 62 towns, 14 counties, 64 streams, 39 lakes or reservoirs, and 31 peaks. A lot, but not all,  of those names established in the  late 19^th century honored Ulysses Grant.  

Two  “Mount Grant” peaks (Nevada and Vermont) and Ulysses S Grant Peak (13,747’) in Colorado are named after Ulysses Grant

Given that Grant was a Union Army general, it may seem surprising to see his name honored in the American South.  The town of Grant in Marshall County, Alabama was named after him in 1887 because many of the residents in the area supported the Union [15]. Grant Parish in Louisiana was established in 1869, with a slight majority of freed slaves, by the Reconstruction legislature in an attempt to build the Republican Party in the state.  

For extra grins, Google Books Ngram Viewer, counting the frequency of selected words in digitized English documents, shows a notable uptick in the frequency of the term “Grant” in 1860, when Ulysses Grant joined the Union Army and eventually served as U.S. President from 1869-1877. This appears to differ from usage patterns of other terms such as “grant”, “Grants”, and “grants”.

Sources

[1]	City of Grants Pass, “Grants Pass,” [Online]. Available: https://www.grantspassoregon.gov/395/History. [Accessed 15 February 2023].
[2]	J. Momsen, “Grants Pass, Oregon History,” 22 June 2011. [Online]. Available: http://www.webtrail.com/history/grantspass.shtml. [Accessed 14 Feb 2023].
[3]	I. B. Daniel, “Historical and Current Use of the Middle and Upper Rogue River, Oregon: A Title Navigability Study.,” 2006.
[4]	S. D. Stumbo, “Group wants name, colorful town founder remembered,” Grants Pass Daily Courier, 10 July 2010.
[5]	C. F. Query, A History of Oregon Ferries Since 1826, Maverick Books, Bend, Oregon, 2008.
[6]	A. G. Walling, History of southern Oregon, comprising Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Curry and Coos counties, Portland, Oregon, 1884, p. 819.
[7]	C. E. Brown, “History of the Rogue River National Forest. Volume 1. 1893-1932,” U.S. Forest Service, 1960.
[8]	S. D. Stumbo and P. Richter, “Getting around was no easy feat in the 1800s,” Daily Courier, p. 4E, 11 March 2010.
[9]	L. A. McArthur, “Oregon Geographic Names. Part 5,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 412-447, December 1926.
[10]	J. Sanders, “The Big Road: Oregon’s Stagecoach Route,” 6 March 2019. [Online]. Available: https://everythingoregon.blogspot.com/2019/03/. [Accessed 15 February 2023].
[11]	W. a. E. Street, “Place Names of Josephine County,” 23 September 2016. [Online]. [Accessed 16 February 2023].
[12]	L. A. McArthur, Oregon Geographic Names, 4th edition, Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1974, p. 835 pp.
[13]	G. L. Dunscomb, A Century of Southern Pacific Steam Locomotives, 1862-1962, Modesto, California: Guy L Dunscomb, 1963, p. 496 pp.
[14]	L. A. McArthur, “Oregon Geographic Names. Part 3,” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 225-264, June 1926.
[15]	J. P. Kaetz, “Grant (town),” in Encyclopedia of Alabama, 2023.
[16]	L. A. McArthur, “Oregon Geographic Names. Part 8,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 281-306, September 1927.
[17]	L. A. McArthur, “Oregon Geographic Names. Part 4,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 295-363, September 1926.
[18]	National Park Service, “The 1846 Applegate Trail—Southern Route to Oregon: Manzanita Rest Area interpretive sign”.
[19]	Unknown, “Hall’s Ferry between Marion and Polk Counties, Oregon, 1906. Image #12137,” Salem Public Library Historic Photgraph Collections, Salem Public Library, Salem, Oregon, 1906.
[20]	W. Sartain, “Ulysses S. Grant Astride his Horse, Cincinnati.,” 1863. [Online]. Available: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-s-unpleasant-ride.htm.
[21]	Kiser Photo Company, “Oregon Historical Society Digital Collections,” 1906. [Online]. Available: https://digitalcollections.ohs.org/southern-pacific-railroad-bridge-over-rogue-river-near-grants-pass-oregon-circa-1906.

Oregon Sentinel. (Jacksonville OR): June 30, 1860; May 10, 1862; June 17, 1863; Aug 1864