The Table Rocks

The Table Rocks rise nearly 800 feet out of the Rogue Valley north of Medford, two horseshoe-shaped mesas capped with andesite lava about seven million years old. The lava once covered far more ground; the Rogue River has carried more than ninety percent of it away, and the Table Rocks stand because their hard caps kept the softer sediments beneath them from wearing down. The Takelma called them Ti'tanak, a name whose meaning has been lost, and dug camas along the creeks below.

The valley's treaty history is pinned to this ground. On September 10, 1853, after a summer of fighting between miners and the Takelma, a council at the east base of Lower Table Rock produced a treaty that gave up most of the valley and set aside a small reservation around the rocks, with Fort Lane built nearby. It lasted barely three years, ending in the war of 1855 and 1856 and the removal of the survivors north to the Coast Reservation.

On top, the andesite does not let water through, and in winter and spring rain collects in shallow vernal pools. Fairy shrimp hatch in them, and around their edges blooms the dwarf woolly meadowfoam, a tiny white wildflower found only on these two mesas. The Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy have owned nearly all of both rocks since the 1980s. A trail climbs each, roughly three miles round trip and 750 feet of gain, open year-round; on top, stay on the path, because the pools are easy to trample. Lower Table Rock's summit still carries the outline of an old airstrip, and concrete pillboxes from army live-fire training stand near the base of Upper Table Rock.