Ashland Municipal Court

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is not just about Shakespeare. Throughout the year the festival presents eleven plays in three theatres over a period of nine months. The festival was founded in the 1930’s when a young teacher noticed the resemblance between the roofless walls of an old Chautauqua building and a 17th-century sketch of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. With over 250 acres, Siskiyou Mountain park at the south of the city offers single-track trails for mountain biking, hiking or horseback riding. A mill in the 1880’s occupied the entrance to Lithia Park at the center of downtown Ashland. This park is the site of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Elizabethan Theater as well as a Japanese garden, two duck ponds and a formal rose garden.