Colestin is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in Jackson County,

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

, United States. It is west of Siskiyou Pass and south-southeast of Ashland along Colestin Road, which connects to

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Californi ...

via Mount Ashland Road. Colestin is adjacent to part of the

Klamath National Forest Klamath National Forest is a national forest, in the Klamath Mountains and Cascade Range, located in Siskiyou County in northern California, but with a tiny extension (1.5 percent of the forest) into southern Jackson County in Oregon. The fores ...

in the

Siskiyou Mountains The Siskiyou Mountains are a coastal subrange of the Klamath Mountains, and located in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon in the United States. They extend in an arc for approximately from east of Crescent City, California, northea ...

. The community is named after Byron Cole, who with his brother settled a

donation land claim The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, sometimes known as the Donation Land Act, was a statute enacted by the United States Congress in late 1850, intended to promote homestead settlements in the Oregon Territory. It followed the Distribution-Preem ...

straddling the Oregon–California border and established a stagecoach station called ''Cole's''. After selling his interest in the station in 1859, Byron Cole acquired land and a mineral spring further north. In 1883, anticipating completion of a railroad between the two states, he built a hotel at the site. In August that year, a post office was established there and named ''White Point''. Ed J. Farlow was the first postmaster and Cole the second. In 1892, the post office name was changed to ''Colestin'', and it operated under that name until closing in 1943. The change in the post office name was preceded by construction of a

Southern Pacific The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

(SP) railway station at this location. In 1887, the SP had leased the

Oregon and California Railroad The Oregon and California Railroad was formed from the Oregon Central Railroad when it was the first to operate a stretch south of Portland in 1869. This qualified the railroad for land grants in California, whereupon the name of the railroad s ...

line, which had extended as far south as Ashland by 1884. The SP then completed the line, connecting it to existing SP tracks in northern California. A railway timetable from that era lists Hornbrook as the next station south of Cole's on the SP's ''Mt. Shasta Route'' between Portland and San Francisco.

References

Unincorporated communities in Jackson County, Oregon Unincorporated communities in Oregon {{JacksonCountyOR-geo-stub