Samuel Colver (1815-1891) and his wife emigrated from his native Ohio via the overland route in 1850. Colver became an Indian Agent participating in both the Rogue Indian Wars and the Modoc Indian War. He agitated for social causes, including prohibition and woman suffrage.

The Colver House, despite its size and Classical Revival style, was built of logs then clad with horizontal weatherboarding. Its most distinctive feature was a double piazza, or front porch, with four superimposed square piers finished with Tuscan caps, an upper deck railing, and exterior stairway.

Although the Colver House combined the characteristics of a block house and stage station, it was not used for either purpose during the Colvers' lifetimes. However, the large second story hall, thirty by fifty feet, was used for community social and cultural events giving rise to local references to "Colver Hall."

No other 19th century log house approaching the Colver in size remains in Oregon. Two other houses standing in Jackson County have more usual dimensions and the traditional technology, hewn logs. The Birdseye House, near Rogue River and the Ernest Lyman House at Gold Hill. Only a few early log houses remain anywhere in Oregon; a few counties have two or three examples. Except for some Pennsylvanian German buildings at Aurora, 19th century log construction in the Oregon Territory, although excellently constructed, was used for temporary houses and considered primative.

The Birdseye House and the Evans House are "primative" log houses of a type originally conceived as interim dwellings, but then retained. These had little resemblence to a "real lumber house." In that sense the Colver House was an anomaly, a curious, exorbitant use of logs within a house in other ways demonstrating the concerns, characteristics and finishes of a permanent, large, Classical Revival home.