A family farm on the hill above Ashland’s North Mountain Park has changed a lot in the last century.
The first owners came to Ashland in the 1880s and ran cattle on the property. In 1944, a young couple from Idaho, Charles and Jessie Hodgins, purchased the farm. They ran a small dairy and managed the Ashland Lumber store. Their son Robert fished for steelhead in No Name Creek behind their farmhouse. Later in the 1970s, his daughter Teresa roamed the farm on her horse and enjoyed riding down North Mountain Avenue when it was still a quiet, dirt road.
Gradually, the city paved nearby roads and installed storm drains. No Name Creek and a turtle pond behind the house dried up, and in 1993 the Hodgins family sold 20 acres to the city that became the hillside and ball fields of North Mountain Park. No Name Creek was re-named Beach Creek. An electric sub-station now sits on what was once part of the farm.
Today, the Hodgins family still runs Ashland Lumber, about 10 acres of the original farm remain undeveloped, and the farmhouse stands beside the creek on North Mountain Avenue.
Sources: "Obituary of Jessie M. Hodgins." Mail Tribune 15 Jan. 2007. Web. 17 Oct. 2013; Sayre, Teresa. Message to the author. 15 Oct. 2013. E-mail; Southern Oregon Historical Society. Oral History Interview with Robert D. “Bob” Hodgins. April 12, 2000.
