Historic Preservation Week will celebrate the city’s past with Tombstone Tales and a photo contest

By Peter Finkle, for Ashland.news

Can you call a cemetery “lively?” Yes! On May 14, historic Ashland Cemetery will be alive with pioneer history. Come meet some of Ashland’s pioneers who are buried here, as they tell you stories of their lives as founding families of Ashland. Tombstone Tales begins at 2 p.m. and the event ends at 4 p.m. Ashland Cemetery is on East Main Street behind Safeway.

This fun approach to local history will be a highlight of our 2025 Historic Preservation Week, from May 13 to 17. Join us for a decades-long tradition of history tours, cemetery tales and historic preservation awards. You can enter a photo contest, a new event this year. See the flyer for dates and details of the week’s events.

A rich history

Beginning as an agricultural pioneer community in the 1850s, Ashland has a rich history. The Historic Preservation Advisory Committee celebrates this history each year in May. Our town’s riches aren’t in mountains of gold or skyscrapers or big factories. They are in literal mountains, in the nature that surrounds us, the people who chose (and still choose) to live here, and the cultural richness these people have created.

One of those people is Lizzie Anderson McCall. She came here as a teenager in a wagon train from Indiana to Ashland with her mother and two siblings. She described it as “an arduous, dirty journey, taking six months.”

Years later, McCall spoke of the day the family reached Ashland in late 1854. “You can imagine how excited I was to actually see for the first time that little settlement which was to become my home. It was rather primitive, I should say. There was a Flour Mill which Abel Helman had recently built. My [older] brother Eli had invested in it, and he and James had brought the first wheat in to be processed. But not to digress, besides the mill there was a blacksmith shop, a small hotel called the Ashland House and one store.”

The “little settlement” she saw is now the Ashland Plaza, where history stories are visible everywhere you look. Plaza buildings you see and walk through today exist because of people who had a dream and took a chance: the Bank of Ashland building, Masonic building, I.O.O.F. building, City Hall and many more.

Here are the Historic Preservation Week events.

Photo contest

Ashland has four historic districts: Downtown (including the Plaza), the Railroad District, the Siskiyou-Hargadine District (from downtown to SOU) and the Skidmore Academy District (from downtown to the hospital). For the new photo contest, photograph a house or landmark within one of the four historic districts (see map). Then email your photo to [email protected] by May 6. Photo contest winners will be announced at the May 17 awards ceremony.

Railroad history walking tour

Learn how the railroad transformed Ashland in the 1890s and beyond. Hear stories about Ashland’s Chinatown and the Chinese family that hosted Chinese New Year celebrations. Find out what young Ashland kids sold to train passengers in the early 1900s. The tour begins at 1 p.m. Tuesday, May 13, by the Golden Connections sculpture in Railroad Park.

Tombstone Tales at Ashland Cemetery

Learn about the lives of Ashland pioneers who are buried at the Ashland Cemetery, thanks to living volunteers who will portray them. This fun, interactive program helps bring local history alive. Tombstone Tales takes place from 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, May 14. Tombstone Tales was founded in 2009 by Delores Nims, and was continued through 2013 by Suzanne Marshall and then Victoria (Law) Kindell. We are thrilled to be bringing it back in 2025.

Awards ceremony

This year’s awards ceremony celebrates the renovation of Pioneer Hall (built in 1921) and the Women’s Civic Club building (built in 1922, now called Ashland Community Center) on Winburn Way. The Historic Preservation Advisory Committee will recognize the best of new construction and historically compatible remodels within our four historic districts. Finally, they will announce photo contest winners. This happens 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 17 at a location to be determined.

Peter Finkle leads Ashland walking tours. Visit WalkAshland.com to learn about his history, theater, art and Haunted Ashland tours, or to request a private tour for your group or family.