What About Ashland?


Several people (including Elayne) asked why I did not include Ashland, OR on my list of potential retirement locations. For years this was at the top of our list of places to live, and so what gives?

For those who do not know Ashland is a small city of about 21,000 people just off of Interstate 5 near the California boarder, nestled between the Siskyous and the Cascades. It is the home of Southern Oregon University and, more famously, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Because of the latter it is definitely a tourist town, but in a good way. It is a somewhat socially progressive town with art galleries, theaters (other than OSF) and a larger than expected (for a city of this size) collection of restaurants featuring a widely diverse selection of cuisines. It has art festivals and parks and a reasonably decent bus system. It has hiking trails and and all sorts of summer activities and Mt Ashland offers skiing in the winter. Its climate is more temperate than central Oregon.

Back when we lived in Portland we visited nearly every year. We loved it. We walked the neighborhoods, parks and nearby trails and talked of moving there to live.

Honestly, do a Google image search and drink in the loveliness. If you've never been the the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) then you should definitely go at least once.

But when you look at the reality of living in Ashland a few problems become apparent.

It is a tiny progressive island in a sea of very conservative waters. Doable, but not exactly what we prefer.

It is isolated. Yeah, it is on I5, but a long drive north or south to anywhere we'd want to visit. Medford is nearby (ten miles to the north) with a small regional airport, but it only provides flights to the same limited set of airport hubs that we have access to here in central Oregon. And sadly, Amtrak crosses over the Cascades well north (and south) of Ashland, and the old scenic Southern Pacific line heading south has been all but abandoned by Union Pacific.

It is expensive. The largest demographic of visitors to OSF are from the Bay Area, and a lot of them bought second homes or sold their California homes for a ton of cash and bought homes in Ashland. I don't resent them, but this has helped drive the median price of a home up to $530K (almost the same as Portland). For $350K you can buy a small two bedroom one and a half bath unit in a shabby former apartment building cheaply and quickly converted to a condo.

For me there is no scuba and no chance for any amount of significant sailing, but for Elayne there is a horse boarding stable just on the other side of I5.

Could we live here? Probably, but only if we could afford it.


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