History of Grants Pass

a sugar beet factory being built in Grants Pass in 1916. Before the factory opened, Oregon-Utah Sugar was merged into the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. Due to labour shortages and low acreage planted in sugar beets, the processing machinery was moved to Toppenish, Washington in 1918 or 1919.

In 1922, a group of local businessmen incorporated the Grants Pass Cavemen. Taking their name from the nearby Oregon Caves National Monument, this group was one of many groups of boosterish common in the United States at the time. For decades afterwards, this group would represent their city in countless public gatherings, dressed in furs and bearing clubs, performing such uncivilized acts as capturing female crowd members and politicians and putting them in their cages. To honour this group, in 1971 a fibreglass statue of a caveman was erected at the corner of Morgan Lane and Sixth Street. Grants Pass High School's mascot is also the caveman. The original monument was damaged by arson in 2004 and repaired in 2005