Southern Oregon Small Towns (Medford, Grants Pass: for sale, real estate, high crime)

[gray horse]

Originally Posted by trishe1

Jacksonville is also one we are interested in! Does anyone live there with any input? Thanks!

Jacksonville is very sweet, and somewhat expensive. Definitely a safe place to go out walking. I don't live there but would consider it to be on my list, after Ashland if I move to the Medford area.

[trishe1]

Gray horse are you in Oregon now? Jacksonville looks beautiful. Are the people really friendly? We want to be somewhere we can really know people and feel like we're in a community. What's the weather like? It seems to be different in every part of the state. lol. Do you know anything about Rogue River or Grants Pass? I just read something about a woman killing 2 people and dismembering their bodies in Grant's Pass and gotta say, kinda freaked me out. lol. Please tell me this is a completely rare thing for those areas? They don't seem large enough to have that kind of crime but maybe I'm just naive.

[gray horse]

@ trishe1, I am in Oregon and will be making a move to Medford from the Portland area. I'm looking for longer and hotter summers, and drier winters than the PDX area, and need to be by an airport for business travel. It is colder in the Rogue Valley than PDX, but I'm OK with that.

I am looking at acreage in the Medford area with irrigation, so Jacksonville doesn't quite match what I need. It's a very cute little (2-3 block) town. Caters to tourists so you have some good restaurants but not much else.They do have a summer musical series that people love. There is a local grocery store, nothing like a Safeway or Alberston's but you can get to those in about 10 minutes. I certainly got the feeling from visiting and staying in town it was very safe, and you get let your kids roam unsupervised.

Crime happens everywhere, haven't read that case...was it stranger violence? In most cases it's not. Grant's Pass / Rogue River is cute but I want to be closer to medical / airport etc. in Medford, as I'm hoping to retire eventually where I move. I am a single gal and I'm not worried about crime in the Rogue Valley.

[trishe1]

Gray horse thank you for your help! You have given me such great insight! I definitely think we need to go up to that area so thank you everyone for giving us tips on places! It helps so much to have specific locations that we might miss if we just went up there and "wing" it. I really appreciate you all!

[trishe1]

Can anyone provide any information on the unincorporated towns around Grant's Pass/Medford area? Such as Trail, OR or Azalea, OR?

[PNW-type-gal]

Originally Posted by trishe1

Can anyone provide any information on the unincorporated towns around Grant's Pass/Medford area? Such as Trail, OR or Azalea, OR?

For now, I'd stay out of the unincorporated areas of Josephine County - Grants Pass, within the city limits, has essential services. Outside the city, county services like sheriff have been cut back to pretty much nil because of funding issues. Jackson County (Medford, Ashland, etc) is in slightly better shape, although none of the rural counties (Douglas, Coos, Curry, Josephine, Jackson, Klamath, Lake, etc) are exactly swimming in cash.

[trishe1]

Thank you PNW Gal...I'm also wondering about hospital locations the more I think about it. I wonder if central Oregon would be more suited for us.

[PNW-type-gal]

Pretty big climate difference between the Rogue Valley and the Bend area. Bend is drier, much higher in elevation and has a fairly long cold winter. Medford is much greener, has a much more distinct spring and fall plus a hotter summer. (Bend is USDA 5, Medford is USDA 8.) I chose Medford over Bend because I wanted greener, less dusty juniper and sage, a shorter winter and more sun. It's not a huge difference, an average of 198 sun/part sun days in Medford vs 167 in Bend, but that adds up to a month a year.

If you like winter sports, Bend's proximity to the Cascades makes it ideal. The main difference between the two areas is that Medford is a blue-collar working town with some tourism, whereas Bend is a tourism/outdoor sports town with a lot of retirees, some of them very wealthy, thrown in. If you go up on Zillow, there are 5 houses over $1,000,000 in Medford, there are 32 in Bend. In the Rogue Valley, Ashland is similar to Bend, much more so than Medford, as far as upscale properties.

In general, Bend has bounced back from the recession a bit better than Medford, so there are potentially more jobs available. On the other hand, I am not sure that there are more quality, full-time, non-service-sector jobs available.

[trishe1]

I appreciate your insight. My husband owns a landscaping company so ideally we would eventually like to start that back up wherever we move to, but know he will need employment as it takes time to establish a business. I'm wondering what areas would be best for that form of business. He has a bachelors in architectural design/horticulture. He runs his business down here so this isn't just a hobby to him. He does hardscapes mainly (walls, waterfalls, patios, outdoor kitchens, etc). It's what he loves so I would really like for us to get somewhere he could get back into that. So weather is important for us to consider.

[Steve Pickering]

Originally Posted by trishe1

Can anyone provide any information on the unincorporated towns around Grant's Pass/Medford area? Such as Trail, OR or Azalea, OR?

Some of them don't actually exist anymore or never were more than a whistle stop to begin with.