Between 1846 and 1856, the Applegate Trail through Josephine County became a major travel corridor for settlers, miners, freighters, and others moving between Oregon and California. Where the route crossed the valley of Wolf Creek, a settlement formed, and by 1855 Six Bit House, the first hotel on the outskirts of the community, served weary, hungry, and thirsty travelers. Dinner, a bed, or breakfast cost two bits, or 25¢, each, and all three together cost six bits, or 75¢. Long lines of mules, often driven by Mexican vaqueros, hauled freight over the hills of southern Oregon to the mining camps. In 1855 James Twogood and McDonough Harkness built Leland Creek House at Grave Creek and advertised that its table would be supplied with the best the country afforded and its bar with choice liquors and cigars. Henry Smith established a hostel at Wolf Creek in 1870, known variously as Six Bit House #2 or Wolf Creek House, and in 1883 he built the Wolf Creek Tavern to serve local stage travelers and railroad passengers. The Wolf Creek Tavern, later listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is among Oregon's best preserved and oldest active travelers' inns. Because the Pacific Highway, built locally in 1914 and hard-surfaced in 1923, followed the same nearby mountain pass as earlier roads, and because the interstate freeway later followed in the 1950s, the tavern remained in service almost without interruption after 1883. The inn was acquired by the State of Oregon in 1975 and restored to its original condition.
