Joan Momsen

The Streets of Grants Pass, Oregon - 2014: E & F Street and Beacon Drive Joan Momsen

Publisher Marketing: As mentioned in the other volumes, this is not a history book, although it is published by the Josephine County Historical Society. It is a book of just current photographs. The JCHS is a non-governmental, non-profit corporation and we get most of our operating funds from the generosity of the community through donations, membership and bequeaths. We continually have to come up with ways to raise money so we can collect and preserve the history of Josephine County. One way is what you see here. Publication of books about the history, and in this case the future history, of the area is one way we raise operations funds. The idea of just taking photos of the way Grants Pass looked in 2014 came about because in other publications, it was observed that the Society does not have photos of all the old buildings when they were first constructed. Hopefully, in decades from now, this series of little publications will give insight and photos of what the town looked like in 2014. It may also give local owners of buildings the impetus to give us their old photos of their buildings instead of just filing them or throwing them out. Although this is the 5th volume of The Streets of Grants Pass, it has the longest time span of when the photos were taken. Most were taken in March 2014, but a few were taken in December 2014. Of the first five books printed, this is the only one that has photos taken by others than the author. Jesse Van Cleave and Severin Burri used two different cameras to take many of the photos. The photos taken with the GoPro camera give a different perspective of some of the buildings. Remember this is just a picture book of the buildings of 2014. E and F Streets to the Parkway were original streets, but not very commercial for years before they were extended east to connect with the I-5 freeway in the 1960s. So some of the buildings have been there for decades and were built toward the end of the streets. Now they are surrounded by newer buildings. Maybe some of these older buildings have childhood memories for those who use to explore the streets that ended in a dead end. Contributor Bio:  Momsen, Joan Author Joan Momsen was born and raised in Grants Pass. She holds bachelors and masters degrees and taught at Grants Pass High School for 28 years. Upon retiring from teaching, she began volunteering full-time at the Josephine County Historical Society.