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The Jefferson County Historical Museum, located in the upper floor of the historic Old County Courthouse in downtown Madras (34 SE “D” St.), was established in the 1970s. It is crammed with historically significant objects, artifacts, records, and photographs. Each item tells its own distinctive part of the story of Jefferson County from Indian times to the homestead and railroad-boom era, through the Great Depression to the advent of irrigation, dam construction, light industry, and tourism. Through displays of period clothing and furnishings, household articles and tools, business equipment (including a pioneer optometrist’s complete office), and priceless family photos, you can discover for yourself how people really lived in these parts in earlier times. 
(The Museum is open May through October, 1-5 pm Monday through Friday, and by appointment; admission is $2, free for JCHS members.) Interested in volunteering in the Museum? Click here!
Likewise, at the County Fairgrounds you can step into our authentically furnished 1914 homestead farmhouse, a gift of the Farrell family of Gateway; and also go back to school in our one-room country school. Nearby, lovers of old farm machinery will enjoy a fine collection of horse-drawn and early motorized implements, including a very rare locally-built 1900’s water-wagon, and probably one of the only horse-powered “stump-pullers” (for clearing fields of juniper trees) still in existence.
Note: The Historical Society is actively planning a new, much larger, more flexible and more accessible facility, the Central Oregon Heritage Center, which will incorporate the present Museum and also the Pioneer Homestead and School. The Heritage Center will be built on County property adjacent to the County Fairgrounds, just off Fairgrounds Road in south Madras.
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