A management advisory committee will begin meeting to investigate the best course of action for the historic Ashland Community Center on Winburn Way, according to a release from the city. Plans call for the committee to meet three times before coming up with recommendations for the building’s future.
The “Playwrights Walk,” a new series of art installations, will bring history to the streets Ashlanders walk. Initially a dozen plaques, and eventually many more, the installation will celebrate the rich and dynamic theater culture in and around Ashland.
Established in 1904, Mountain View Cemetery is the largest of three town cemeteries owned and operated by the city of Ashland. Just over 18 acres, this tranquil oasis is bordered by the Central Bike Path, Normal Avenue, and Ashland Street.
Ashland’s 150th birthday dates from its incorporation as the City of Ashland on Oct. 13, 1874. The Oregon legislature passed a bill that was signed on that day by Governor La Fayette Grover. Ashland celebrates its 150th birthday party from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct 20, at Butler Bandshell in Lithia Park.
Remodel efforts in the city’s long-shuttered Community Center have revealed more structural deficiencies than anticipated, raising the question whether to do extensive repair work or raze and rebuild. At its study session Monday, the Ashland City Council directed staff to investigate how best to proceed with the historic building on Winburn Way, adjacent to Pioneer Hall and across the street from Lithia Park.
A wind-driven grass fire ignited near Almeda Drive on Sept. 8, 2020, ravaged its way northwest through the wildland urban interface, destroying thousands of structures through Talent and Phoenix. The direction of the wind that day is often credited with preserving Ashland from the fire. But there was also a quick intervention from the south, when firefighters with the Greensprings Rural Fire District extinguished a vehicle fire intentionally set on fire at Emigrant Lake.
A contingent of SOU students with visiting alumni, led by anthropology professor Mark Tveskov, spent Labor Day and Tuesday traveling to eastern Oregon, where they will conduct excavations in search of artifacts to better tell the stories of Black loggers who lived and worked in the town of Maxville in the 1920s and 1930s.
USA Today lists Ashland’s Winchester Inn at the top of a list of the nation’s 10 best bed-and-breakfasts in an article published Aug. 14. “If this brings extra people to the valley to visit, then that’s a win for us, and that’s a win for everybody,” said owner Drew Gibbs.
“It can happen again. It can happen to somebody else. It’s all on us to prevent it from happening again.” That’s what David Loftus, son of Mitzi Asai Loftus, said of the prison camps hastily built to imprison Japanese Americans in World War II during Ashland Together’s encore presentation Monday night of Mitzi’s book, “From Thorns to Blossoms: A Japanese American Family in War and Peace.”
Emil and Alice Peil could “keep an eye” on the store from their house on Granite Street, but walking there was another matter. The drop-off from Granite Street to Winburn Way was (and still is) the height of a two-story building.
Gov. Tina Kotek called a special legislative session Thursday to come up with $218 million to pay outstanding balances from the 2024 wildfire season. Lawmakers voted 25-2 in the Senate and 42-2 in the House to pay that bill by sending $191.5 million to the state forestry department and $26.6 million to the Office of the State Fire Marshal.
Millions of western monarch butterflies once visited Oregon and other Western states each spring to drink flower nectar, pollinate plants and lay their eggs after wintering in forests in coastal California. But today just a couple hundred thousand make the journey. To help curb their decline, a federal wildlife nonprofit has granted nearly $760,000 to improve the monarch’s habitat.
Relocations: “I don’t think there are any other artists (besides Richard Serra) who worked with the level of ambition, exactness and vision to create something on such a magnificent scale that changes human experience.” — Sarah Roberts, head of painting and sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Obituary: Ruth Bell Alexander, 80, a pioneering women’s health advocate, writer, and community leader, died Dec. 4 in Ashland. In 2005, Ruth Alexander was elected to the Ashland School Board, where she served two terms as a vocal advocate for equitable education and student engagement. She organized the whole town into a one-week television hiatus called “No TV Week” in the early 1990s.
Mt. Ashland Ski Area’s first new chairlift in more than three decades will open this weekend. The Lithia Chair will open at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, giving skiers and snowboarders greater access to easy and intermediate slopes, according to a release issued Tuesday from the nonprofit ski area.
Review: This year’s production of “A Christmas Carol,” playing at the CTP and directed by Tommy Statler, is original, imaginative and lighter than last year’s production of the same. The story of the miserly curmudgeon who finds redemption in the meaning of Christmas keeps with the spirit of the season.
(It’s free)