Snapshot

Bill Miller

Who drained the pool?

It seems every decade or two in Medford, a few people would like to make a splash by taking a deep dive into a pool idea, while others prefer the economic safety of dry land.

Previous Columns

The politics of fish and pine trees - 5/12/2013
Twenty-five years ago, temperatures already were climbing into the mid-70s as the military transport plane carrying Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush touched down at the Medford-Jackson...
Shining the light at Trinidad - 5/5/2013
From their village on the bluffs above the Pacific, Yurok Indians likely watched Portuguese explorer Sebastian Rodriguez Cerme�o's galleon as it sailed south along the Northern California coast in...
The danger of 'boyish, wild ways' - 4/28/2013
The life and times of August Singler, the first law enforcement officer and only sheriff in Jackson County killed in the line of duty, are well-known.
Trouble in the book stacks - 4/21/2013
"If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library."
A Champion monument - 4/14/2013
Not long after Champ Payne put a ring on Betty McCollum's finger in April 1852, he and his 17-year-old bride left Missouri for Oregon.
From Woodville to the big leagues - 4/7/2013
There's more to spring than April showers watering the flowers.
From Jesse Miller to the Busy Beaver - 3/31/2013
If you're looking for a specific Miller, you might as well be pitching through a haystack. That's because, according to the U.S.
Watch out for dinosaurs! - 3/24/2013
When dinosaurs began appearing along the Oregon Coast in 1953, road-weary drivers must have wondered where they'd left their sanity.
A can of gold in the henhouse - 3/17/2013
In March 1894, just across Bear Creek and southeast of Phoenix, the Danielson boys were cleaning out a chicken coop on the Roberts place.
The quiet legacy of Elisha Larson - 3/10/2013
The surest way to be forgotten is to not stick around the old neighborhood and just quietly get out of town.
The White Ribbon Sisterhood - 3/3/2013
Who would believe a woman who married just days after she turned 16 to a man nearly twice her age would become a leader of the women's movement in Southern Oregon?
Is the sky falling? - 2/24/2013
Just a couple of weeks ago, when an asteroid was hurtling toward Earth, some of us remembered Bruce Willis in that 1998 movie, "Armageddon," when he saved the planet by blowing himself up while...
'Plunging into the darkness below' - 2/17/2013
If a chicken crosses the road to get to the other side, why do covered wagons slide straight down a hill?
Something fishy in the State of Jefferson - 2/3/2013
When a handcuffed Frank de Souza was pulled out of the post office and pushed into a waiting police car, there was shock on the streets of Medford.
Ashland time capsule: What lasts 100 years? - 1/28/2013
The city of Ashland is giving community members a chance to put a little piece of themselves in a 100-year time capsule set to be buried beneath the downtown Plaza in March.
A couplet without a rhyme - 1/27/2013
When the couplet came to Medford in 1958, stressed-out auto drivers thought it was really great — sort of.
He was a 'vagabond pioneer ... singled out for difficult jobs' - 1/20/2013
The day after Christmas in 1871, the body of a well-dressed man was found floating among the tules near Napa Creek, four miles north of Vallejo, Calif.
Three Savage children side by side - 1/13/2013
There's no way to pass by three children's graves without asking why.
Railroads don't build themselves - 1/6/2013
The Mail Tribune's recent series chronicling the birth of the railroad in Oregon inspired a reader's question: "How do you physically build a railroad by hand?"
A Christmas tree for everyone - 12/23/2012
"There will be lights — hundreds of them — and 1,000 candy canes and 1,000 oranges — and band music, too!"