Researchers predicted benefits from removing the 106-year-old Gold Ray Dam in 2010. Among them were more salmon and steelhead swimming upriver to spawn and more rafters enjoying the scenery along 57 miles of newly opened water. But who anticipated gold fever!

From 1958 until 1963, nine Central Point, Ore., friends ranging in age from 16 to 75 met eight times a year in a Great Decision Discussion group, studying and discussing America’s foreign policy.

Blackstone founder Craig Black and his wife, Michelle, started their audio book business in their living room in Medford, Ore., in 1987. They later moved to Ashland and enlisted Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors to narrate books on tape.

An Ashland High School graduate who was the 1996 Oregon High School golf champion, Jason Allred, went on to play on the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour.  Before that, he competed in collegiate golf at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., where he graduated in 2002.

Since 1947, the Grange Co-op grain elevator had been a beacon for miles around Central Point, Ore, but on the night of Oct. 12, 1961, it became a terrifying pillar of flame.

There was a time when electrified railways ran through downtown Medford and connected Medford with Jacksonville.  Those tracks are long gone today.

For 60 years thousands of Southern Oregonians have celebrated the arrival of spring at the annual Pear Blossom Festival in Medford, Ore.

On five acres along Elk Creek near Tiller, Ore., a sharp eye can spot more than 50 varieties of camellias, a plant native to Japan, Korea, and China that became popular in the U.S. South in the late 1700s.  French botanist Andre Michaux presented the first imported camellia to South Carolina Gov. Henry Middleton in 1786. That parent plant is still used to propagate others. As the new plant made its way across the United States, Alabama chose the camellia as its state flower.