Ashland’s popular Pie + Vine restaurant has ceased operations, and a new owner is taking over the premises to offer a different culinary option in the downtown restaurant scene.
If you step into the Ashland Springs Hotel in 2025, you’re standing amid 100 years of history. When the grand hotel opened in 1925, it was the tallest structure between San Francisco and Portland — and it remained so for decades.
Despite surprisingly heavy snowfall, urgently plowed roads and sporadic spinouts, Saturday saw an estimated 2,000 skiers braving mountain roads to give Mt. Ashland Ski Area launch day for its long-awaited new chair lift, the first new lift in more than 30 years.
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.
Ashland’s TC Chevy has shifted into high gear on sustainability, becoming a shining example of clean energy innovation with the addition of three new Stracker solar arrays to its existing five units. The dealership now is in a position to run entirely on sun power, achieving net-zero status and proving that the road to a greener future starts at home.
The Ashland Daily Tidings — established as a newspaper in 1876 — ceased operations in 2021 (its parent company, Rosebud Media, held on until 2023), but if you were a local reader, you may not have known. Almost as soon as it closed, a website for the Tidings reemerged, supposedly boasting a team of eight reporters who cranked out densely reported stories every few days. The reality was that none of the people allegedly working for the Ashland Daily Tidings existed, or at least were who they claimed to be. The bylines listed on Daily Tidings articles were put there by scammers using artificial intelligence, and in some cases stolen identities, to dupe local readers.
The amount of reporting produced in Oregon has been declining for decades — a fact that is likely unsurprising to Oregonians who have seen their newspapers thin and local coverage shrink. It’s a trend that has been playing out across the country as the business of producing journalism has faltered alongside the rise of the internet.
Growing the birthing center and maintaining the emergency department at Asante Ashland Community Hospital are among the goals listed in a new strategic plan announced in a news release from Asante, which operates hospitals in Ashland, Medford and Grants Pass, as well as offering related medical services in a number of Rogue Valley locations.
Ashland has a new Goodwill Retail Store that doubles the previous store’s sales space and includes a Job Connection, a center that helps people in the community develop and upgrade their work skills. A throng of shoppers lined up for the store’s opening Thursday at 777 E. Jefferson Ave., less than a mile from the old store on Tolman Creek Road. The old store is now closed.
The snow bibs were strapped and the bindings tightened as Mt. Ashland Ski Area kicked off its 2024-25 winter season Friday morning for excited snow sports enthusiasts in the Rogue Valley. This year on the mountain, the ski area will have multiple new features including the brand-new Lithia Chair — Mt. Ashland’s first new chair lift to be installed since the 1980s — as well as other new amenities.
Ask Strider: A reader asks whatever happened to Woody the Puppy Intern? Strider has news! Woody has landed on all four paws with a new gig. And Steve, the Ashland.news crossword editor, has a new canine crossword up for solving. The excitement is pupable!
The Oregon Legislature is meeting this week to consider some major cuts to current spending levels as a large revenue deficit looms. That’s because the state’s tax code automatically replicates new federal tax cuts, including ones passed by Congressional Republicans this summer that will reduce state revenue
Michael O’Looney: Trump and the Texas Legislature are responsible for a partisan power grab that has unleashed bitterness and partisan vindictiveness, all in an effort to subvert an electoral system for partisan ends.
Councilor Bob Kaplan: While the cost of delivering kilowatt-hours to our homes has risen, Ashland Electric has been able to hold our rates steady with just one increase of 5.1% in 2021. I’m sorry to say we’re due for an increase, but fortunately it’s not likely to match recent increases elsewhere.
An estimate for the cost to abate asbestos found in the shuttered Lincoln School recently should be available as early as sometime this week, according to Steve Mitzel, operations director for Ashland School District. The cost to remove asbestos would be separate from the as yet-unknown cost for structural repair.
“We are still here” was the theme for Saturday’s Native American Heritage Celebration at Southern Oregon University, hosted by the SOU Native American Student Union (NASU) and SOU Native Nations Liaison Kenwanicahee (Kenwani) Kravitz (Madesi Bandi, Pit River Nation Winnemem, Nomtipom and Nomsus Bands Northern Wintu).
(It’s free)
