Skull found at historic house adds mystery to remodel

MEDFORD, Ore. – Forensic anthropologists in Eugene are trying to crack the mystery of an old skull, probably that of a young girl, found during the remodeling of a historic Medford home.

Construction workers found it in January in loose soil in a crawl space under a guest house at the historic Owen house on East Main Street.

Police looked for other bones but found none and say there is no evidence so far of a crime, although they have opened a case file.

Deputy state medical examiner Dr. James Olson determined the skull was probably from the 1800s, said Tim Pike, a deputy medical examiner in Jackson County.

Olson took the skull to Lane County, where the medical examiner’s chief investigator is a forensic anthropologist who works closely with the University of Oregon anthropology department.

Pike hopes these experts can tease the truth out of the theories southern Oregon investigators have developed.

Pike says the skull may have arrived at the Medford home as a souvenir or memento collected – and then abandoned – by a Camp White officer in the 1940s. Camp White, near Medford, was a training base for soldiers in World War II.

The guest house was a garage converted to living quarters and rented to military officers stationed at Camp White, Pike said.

One may have picked it up in his travels and tucked it away in the building when he determined he could not travel with it when he shipped out.

“The garage was built on a slope, so there is a little cubbyhole at the back that’s just big enough to push a skull through,” Pike said. “This was found right at the base of that, like it could have fallen down from there.”

John Johnson, who has owned the property since 2004, says kids who once lived there might have picked it up somewhere and stashed it there.

He said skulls were commonly displayed as artifacts in schools and businesses as recently as 50 years ago.

Southern Oregon Historical Society records show that architect Frank Clark designed the two-story main house in 1914 and 1915, and members of the Owen family lived there into the 1940s. Property records then show five owners since 1982.

Pike said the Lane County medical examiner has been working in Louisiana after last year’s hurricanes, so the final report on the skull still could take some time to prepare.