July 30, 2019
The 1854 date on the historical marker on the building at the corner of California and Oregon streets is correct, but it was not the site of a butcher shop. The “fire-proof store” now home to The Cotton Broker was constructed in 1861 for Israel and Robert Haines, replacing a wooden building at the same location they had occupied since arriving in Jacksonville 7 years earlier. This one-story brick structure is one of the oldest commercial buildings to survive 3 major fires that ravaged the town. The brothers’ variety store occupied the building until the mid-1860s when they experienced financial difficulties. Robert went on to study medicine and relocated to San Francisco. Israel (shown here) read law. He moved to eastern Oregon where he became a prominent Baker City lawyer and politician and founded the town of Haines. Post-1866 records show a series of short-term occupants until Louis Solomon moved his mercantile business to this location following his $8,000 loss in the 1874 fire. He was still occupying the building in 1888 when another devastating fire wiped out much of that end of town. However, “the fire proof character of Solomon’s store building was fully demonstrated, as the flames were raging against the rear wall fully half an hour before being extinguished, without raising the temperature inside.”