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First Courthouse in Washington State
This scene, photographed about 1905, shows the home of John Robinson Jackson, one of the first
settlers north of the Columbia River. The Jackson home was located about ten miles up the
Cowlitz Trail from Cowlitz Landing. The Cowlitz Trail was an early route to Puget Sound
from Cowlitz Landing at the head of the navigable water route from Fort Vancouver. Cowlitz
Landing was located about one mile down the Cowlitz River from present-day Toledo, Washington.
The Jackson home was also known as the Jackson Prairie courthouse, as the building was used as
the first courthouse within the northern part of Oregon Territory, which a few years later
became Washington Territory. The first record from the Jackson Prairie courthouse is from
October 4, 1847, when Sheriff John R. Jackson presented a Lewis County tax assessment roll for
examination at the October term of the Commissioners Court of Lewis County. Lewis County was
named after Captain Meriwether Lewis, and in 1847 Lewis County included all of what is now
western Washington, west of the Cowlitz River and the crest of the Cascade Mountains. Federal
Judge William Strong held the first U.S. District Court session north of the Columbia River
at the Jackson Prairie courthouse on November 12, 1850. On October 27, 1852, a public meeting
of citizens of northern Oregon Territory was also held at the Jackson Prairie courthouse. At
this meeting, a resolution was passed to appoint and send delegates to a general convention,
to be held at Monticello, Oregon Territory, on the last Thursday of November, for the purpose
of memorializing a petition to Congress to establish a separate territory north of the
Columbia River. Monticello was located along the west bank of the Cowlitz River, near the
confluence with the Columbia River, and within what is now the present-day city of Longview,
Washington. On November 25, 1852, John R. Jackson was one of forty-four delegates who met at
Monticello and signed the Monticello Convention Memorial, the petition to Congress to
establish a separate territory north of the Columbia River. The Monticello Convention
Memorial stated that the new territory should be named the Territory of Columbia, but on
March 2, 1853, President Millard Fillmore signed legislation establishing the new territory
as the Territory of Washington. The restored Jackson Prairie courthouse is located about
eleven miles south along the present-day Jackson Highway (old US 99) from Chehalis,
Washington, and is located near present-day Marys Corner.
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