Colestin is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Jackson County,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while 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 System, 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 thro ...

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

Klamath National Forest Klamath National Forest is a United States National Forest, national forest, in the Klamath Mountains and Cascade Range, located in Siskiyou County, California, Siskiyou County in northern California, but with a tiny extension (1.5 percent of th ...

in the

Siskiyou Mountains The Siskiyou Mountains are a Coast Ranges, 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, Calif ...

. The community is named after Byron Cole, who with his brother settled a donation land claim 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 A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...

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) 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 names ...

(SP) railway station at this location. In 1887, the SP had leased the Oregon and California Railroad 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