The 50th Ashland Run will be held on Saturday morning at 8:30 May 24th, 2025. The first Ashland Run was held on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend in 1976.

For forty-nine consecutive Memorial Day weekend Saturdays runners have gathered at the corner of Pioneer and Hargadine streets, across from the outdoor Shakespearean theatre, in anticipation of the 8:30 lighting of the firecracker signifying the start of the annual Ashland Run. The Ashland Run, an approximately 4.6 mile jaunt, is the oldest continuously held distance footrace in the Rogue Valley.

The Hoxmeier brothers, Steve and Doug, aged 81 and 78, are the co-founders of the Ashland Run and ready to retire from the responsibilities of directing the annual event. Over the past half century, with help from family and friends, the brothers have unfailingly organized the race, marked the course, collected prizes from local merchants, clocked the times of the finishers and done everything necessary to make the Ashland Run a fun if slightly eccentric Ashland tradition.

(Full disclosure: I have been a friend of the Hoxmeiers for over fifty years and I have run the Ashland Run course with them many times including before it became the unofficial start of summer in Ashland).

In the bicentennial year when the Hoxmeier brothers founded the race, distance races for casual runners were few and far between. Running and jogging as a recreational activity was relatively new. Bill Bowerman, the famed Medford High School and University of Oregon track coach and Nike co-founder did much to popularize the running boom of the 1970s.

The motivation to initiate the Ashland Run was to raise money for the then-planned Bear Creek Greenway. The Hoxmeier brothers were successful in their goal and contributed financially to the creation of the Greenway.

The entry fee on the first Ashland Run was $1.25. Now it's free although donations are accepted. Unlike every other athletic event nowadays, the Ashland Run doesn't require runners to sign-up online in advance with a credit card--in fact you can't. Just show up a half hour or more before the 8:30 start with some folding money in your pocket which you might drop into the donation box to cover the cost of post-race refreshments and other expenses.

The course starts on Hargadine Street, passes the Ashland City Library, continues along Siskiyou Boulevard to Triangle Park and up an alley and Liberty Street to Liberty Street Park. From there the chalked lines and arrows direct runners to Waterline Road and past the Crowson Reservoir, down Ashland Loop Road to Glenview Drive and through Lithia Park to the finish on Pioneer Street next to the Shakespearean outdoor theatre. The course has undergone some minor route changes over the years due to private property concerns. The reservoir is the apex of the run and about 500 feet higher than the lowest elevation at the library.