Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it?

“Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it?”

Jacksonville, Oregon… Written the only way it deserves: with one foot in memory, one foot in the present, and the whole damned story dipped in nostalgia and feral honesty.

There’s a strange gravitational pull to Jacksonville, Oregon. A little gold-rush relic tucked into the folds of the Rogue Valley, where time moves just a hair slower than everywhere else, like a record player left running too long after the party ended. It’s not the biggest place I’ve ever been, not the wildest, not the most dramatic on any map. But it’s the one that sunk its hooks into me early and never let go.

I’ve been drifting through that town since I was a kid. Small enough back then to be dazzled by anything shiny, but old enough to know when a place had real bones. Jacksonville had them. Still does. Old brick storefronts, crooked wooden walkways, creaking staircases leading to god-knows-where. The whole place feels like it’s held together by stubbornness and some Victorian-era pact to never surrender to modern life.

When you’re young, you don’t have the words for that kind of magic. You just feel it: the heat coming off the sidewalks, the smell of dust and old timber, the murmur of tourists mixing with the ghosts of miners who probably drank themselves to death in the very saloons you’re walking past. As a kid, it felt like stepping into another world, the kind of world where adventure wasn’t something you found, but something that found you.

Later, when I came back older, louder, meaner, and a little more battered by life, Jacksonville still hit the same nerve. That’s the curse of nostalgia: the damned place doesn’t change as much as you do. But Jacksonville always had this way of grounding me. Like some tiny pocket of Oregon that refused to join the 21st century and would kindly invite you to sit down, take a breath, and remember you were once a wide-eyed little human who thought anything was possible.

Part of it is the history, the kind you can actually feel. You don’t have to squint or pretend. It’s right there in the brickwork, the old wagon ruts carved into the streets, the cemetery on the hill watching over everything like a stern grandmother who’s seen too much and isn’t impressed by any of your modern nonsense.

Part of it is the atmosphere, a calm that drapes over the town like a wool blanket, heavy but comforting. Even in the summer, when the heat settles in and everything smells like pine needles, old metal, and blackberry brambles baking in the sun, Jacksonville manages to hold on to a sense of quiet rebellion. It’s as if the whole town collectively agreed:

“We’re not here to be conquered. We’ve been through worse.”

But the real reason it’s my favorite?

Because every time I go back, I feel like I’m visiting every version of myself that ever set foot there.

The kid with scraped knees and pocketfuls of rocks.

The teenager trying to escape small-town gravity.

The adult staggering back to rediscover something half-lost.

The photographer hunting for good light and better stories.

All of them walking the same streets, touching the same railings, breathing the same Rogue Valley air that feels like it’s whispering: Welcome back. Try not to screw it up this time.

Some places are pretty.

Some places are fun.

Some places are impressive.

But Jacksonville?

Jacksonville is imprinted.

A town that carved its initials into my memory and dared me to forget them.

And I never have.

Not once. Not ever.

If there’s a favorite place in this twisted, beautiful state. A place that shaped me, steadied me, and still calls me back with that old gold-rush siren song, it’s Jacksonville.

Always has been.

Probably always will be.