Biohazard Cleanup Near Bybee Corner Medford, OR

Medford is a city in and the county seat of Jackson County, Oregon, in the Rogue Valley near the middle fork of Bear Creek, about 27 miles north of the California border.

The city was named in 1883 by David Loring, a civil engineer and right-of-way agent for the Oregon and California Railroad, after Medford, Massachusetts, near his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts.

Railroad surveyors chose a depot site in November 1883 and platted the town with 82 blocks in early December 1883, the first post office opened in J. S. Howard's store on February 6, 1884, and Medford was incorporated as a town on February 24, 1885, and again as a city in 1905.

Medford took the title of Jackson County seat away from nearby Jacksonville in 1927.

At the 2020 census Medford had a population of 85,824, making it the eighth-most populous city in Oregon, with 34,000 households, and its metropolitan area population was 223,259.

Medford grew from 967 people in 1890 to 8,840 in 1910, then to 74,907 in 2010 before reaching 85,824 in 2020.

Medford sits in a rain shadow between the Cascade Range and the Siskiyou Mountains, giving it a Mediterranean climate that is drier and sunnier than the Willamette Valley, near the Upper and Lower Table Rock lava formations.

Interstate 5 was completed immediately adjacent to downtown Medford in 1967, and a new north Medford interchange followed in 2006 at a cost of about 36 million dollars, with a south Medford interchange completed in 2010 at a cost of 72 million dollars.

Lithia Motors, the largest automotive retailer in the United States by revenue as of 2025, is headquartered in Medford, and its employees moved into a new downtown headquarters in The Commons in late 2012.

Harry and David, the premium food and gift producer founded in 1934 by brothers Harry and David Holmes and known for its Royal Riviera pears, is headquartered in Medford.