Ashland’s bicycling infrastructure recently got an upgrade — four bright green ‘bike boxes’ were recently installed at the intersection of Ashland Street and Walker Avenue. These highly-visible paint markings position bicycles ahead of traffic during red lights, enhancing their visibility and making intersections safer for pedestrians and cyclists alike.
The fundraising campaign for the restoration of the historic Butler-Perozzi fountain in Lithia Park is nearing completion following a $20,000 grant awarded by the State Historic Preservations Office’s Preserving Oregon Grant Program.
Childcare providers have until Friday, July 26, to submit applications for Early Childhood Affordability Grant Program grants, according to an announcement by the city on Monday, July 22. The application period opened July 12, the release said.
Volunteers gathered Sunday morning in Railroad Park to make repairs to the Say Their Names memorial T-shirts along the fence by the park. it was the third or fourth Sunday in a row volunteers came to the park to slowly recreate the memorial for its fifth iteration.
Four plays among 350 submitted to the Ashland New Plays Festival will be performed during the group’s 2024 Fall Festival this October. The playwrights will be in Ashland for a week of readings, development, and collaboration and will present their plays from Oct. 16 to 20.
The Siskiyou Crest Coalition, based in southwest Oregon, sponsored a unique fundraiser on July 13: a day of guided hikes at a private property on Mount Ashland. The emphasis of the day’s activities was on the ecological value of the Siskiyou Crest: the unparalleled biodiversity resulting from ecosystem niches influenced by six biotic regions; its importance as a wildlife connectivity corridor; and its astonishing number of endemic botanical species.
Monday evening nearly every chair in Carpenter Hall was full as Marko Bey shared the stage with Lomakatsi’s Tribal Partnerships Director Belinda Brown. The pair were headline speakers at an event organized through the collective effort of Ashland.news, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Ashland Together to showcase Lomakatsi’s efforts to answer the promise of wildfire with collaborative partnerships between federal, state, local and tribal governments and other organizations to create resilient forests and communities.
Jed D. Meese, known in the Rogue Valley for the many millions he and his family donated for the betterment of the community, died at home in Medford on June 24, 2024, at the age of 86. Friends and associates say the true measure of the man was in the contribution of not only his treasure, but also his time and talent and empathy.
As fall approaches, the Ashland Independent Film Festival volunteers and coordinators prepare for the festival’s triumphant return to the Rogue Valley. With a new executive director, the festival is set to involve plenty of new ideas, events and programs while maintaining the classic film festival experience.
The Siskiyou Crest Coalition is hosting a fundraiser Saturday afternoon, July 13, at a private conserved property on the slopes of Mount Ashland owned by Mark Newberger. A butterfly species list is being compiled for the property, which will be the subject of an upcoming article in the North American Butterfly Association magazine and will be a nominee for NABA butterfly garden of the year.
Those driving through downtown Ashland Thursday afternoon may have encountered a traffic disruption at the corner of East Main and North Pioneer streets when first responders closed off some traffic lanes while they investigated what was initially reported as a structure fire.
The recently completed $750,000 Bear Creek River Mile 19 project wasn’t intended to have a strictly surface level effect, but to create a nuanced restoration of eight acres of wildland urban interface within the Almeda Fire scar.
The Ashland Independent Film Festival kicks off its four-day run Thursday, Oct. 3, with the centerpiece film for the festival, ‘Including Us,’ set for its world premiere Saturday. The film, made by local director Brandon Givens, is about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Hairspray: A Broadway Musical” in 2019. The story focuses on four actors with disabilities who starred in the musical, along with the rest of the cast.
Electric Department Head Tom McBartlett presented a master plan to keep the city of Ashland’s electric department safe, reliable and capable of meeting future demand at the Ashland City Council study session Monday. The plan projected that, with a few changes, the city’s electric system would be capable of handling the projected population growth and with a few potential upgrades and alterations — such as an expansion of the Mountain Avenue substation and a potential upgrade to its transformer.
After narrowly making it back to Southern Oregon on one of the last flights out of Asheville, North Carolina, before remnants of Hurricane Helene touched down last Thursday, Ashland resident Ashley Brown is hearing devastating news directly from friends in the area.
Rough patches of pavement along about a mile of North and East Main streets and Lithia Way were ground up and taken away, replaced by freshly laid inlays of asphalt Monday and Tuesday during a joint project of the Oregon Department of Transportation and the city of Ashland.
(It’s free)
