Rogue River: From Tailholt to Woodville to Here

The town now called Rogue River has gone by two other names in its life. The first settlers around eighteen fifty called it Tailholt, a piece of frontier slang that polite society eventually found embarrassing. In eighteen seventy-two the town was renamed Woodville, honoring a local man named John Wood who mattered enough at the time to be immortalized but not enough to be remembered today.

The post office ran under that name for decades. By nineteen twelve, with the Pacific Highway coming through and tourists on the move, the town council voted to rename the place after the river it sits beside, which at least had the virtue of being famous. The new name stuck.

What was Tailholt, became Woodville, became Rogue River, incorporated in nineteen twelve.