Ashland City Band, Part 3: The band’s history since 1876! Including why the City Band is different from other bands, how it can rehearse as little as it does, and a reminder to see them play free in the park on Thursday evenings through Aug. 11.
Ashland’s oldest hotel is once again open for business. Ashland has two historic hotel buildings, the Peerless Hotel, built in 1900, and Ashland Springs Hotel, built in 1925. The Peerless, at 243 Fourth street in the Railroad District, was closed for three months for renovations by its newest owner, Shawn Donnille.
Originally called “Ashland Mills,” Ashland was founded around Abel Helman’s water-powered sawmill on Ashland Creek, later transformed into a flour mill. The Ashland Woolen Mill, on Helman Street, was one of the city’s major employers in the 19th century. As late as the 1950s, Ashland still boasted half a dozen lumber mills.
The question arose: Might there — despite all the years of commercial construction and trenching for buried utility lines at the Plaza — remain any evidence of an Indigenous village along the banks of what we now call Ashland Creek?
Nearly 18 months after the devastating Almeda Fire destroyed her downtown Talent business, Bonnie K. Morgan is cobbling together more than $1 million to rebuild. She’ll host an “Art of the Fire” art show Saturday at the shell of the historic Malmgren Garage.
Ashland boosters in the early 1920s would have none of building a hotel the same size as those of rival towns; they would build the tallest building between San Francisco and Portland!
Heavy rain on New Year’s Eve 1996 brought flooding to Ashland as 1997 dawned, including the downtown Plaza area, causing $50 million in property damage and displacing 1,500 people.
Lithia Park is often called Ashland’s “crown jewel.” Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, it was among the first public parks in southern Oregon — but, if not for a group of persistent women, things would be much different.
What’s now a treasured-yet-crumbling Ashland landmark started as an attraction at an international exposition in San Francisco more than a century ago.
The festival began as a two-play production on July 2, 1935, performing the two Shakespearean plays. Ashland’s grant was with the stipulation, however, that afternoon boxing matches would also be held to help cover costs. The festival succeeded so well that the theater ticket revenues covered the boxing matches’ losses.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc lobortis enim non odio vulputate, sit amet dapibus ligula dictum. Proin consectetur fringilla dapibus. Pellentesque et dolor iaculis, ullamcorper turpis faucibus,
Ask Strider: A worried older brother asks our advice columnist’s advice. And a dog’s guardian wants to know if there is any hope getting their hat-hating dog to calm down. As always, Strider tries to give words that help!
After a successful production of “The Vagina Monologues” and raising more than $2,000 for Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Ashland actor and director Lia Dugal intends for “The Climate Monologues” to premiere in Oregon in late 2025 or early 2026 at the Bellview Grange in Ashland.
It’s complicated.
Herbert Rothschild: Whether visualization and intention by themselves can effect broad social change is impossible to determine, but the question merits sustained consideration.
(It’s free)
