Snippet from the National Register report: "The Rast House is a one and one half story wood frame house in the Gothic style. The T-shaped building has a major front-facing wing with steeply-pitched gable roof with a wide eave board and gingerbread trim, a north facing wing has been replaced due to a fire about 1920; the original trim was not restored on this wing....Paths in the garden are laid out with large building blocks from the nearby Mehl and Rast Brewery. In 1937 when SE Stephens Street was widened, the Rast house was moved about 30 feet west from it's original site.

The Rast House has been in the same family since its construction in 1875 on property that goes back to Donation Land Claim taken out by Isaac Jones On Nov. 25, 1854. Jones' daughter, Clara Jones, married John Rast in 1864. John Rast was born in Switzerland in 1838 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1854. He settled in Independence, MO, came to the Shasta Valley in California in 1859, and later began work at a sawmill in Scottsburg, Oregon...1864 settled in Roseburg. Rast became a partner with Gottlieb Mehl in 1864 in the Roseburg Roller Mills, the first grist mill in Roseburg which had been erected by his father-in-law, Isaac Jones. The Rasts had six children."