Medford, OR

Medford is the capital of the Rogue Valley, the sunny southern Oregon basin whose orchards made the city's fortune: the pear — above all the buttery Comice — grows here to perfection, and Harry & David, the mail-order fruit empire founded on a local orchard, still ships the valley's harvest from Medford to the world. The valley's other crops are scenery and culture: Crater Lake, the impossibly blue caldera of Mount Mazama and America's deepest lake, lies within a day-trip; the neighbouring gold-rush town of Jacksonville hosts the Britt Festival's summer concerts under the ponderosas; and Ashland's renowned Shakespeare Festival plays just down the road.

Medford's own stage — the archive's address — carries a Hollywood name with a local explanation: the Craterian Theater, a 1924 vaudeville and picture house downtown, was restored and reopened in 1997 as the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, honouring the dancing star who owned a ranch on the Rogue River for fifty years and lent her name and support to the rebuilding; the hall, recorded in the events as the Ginger Rogers Theater (a canonical-name note for the registry), presents the region's concerts, touring companies and Broadway series. Pears, a volcano's lake and Ginger's theatre: the Rogue Valley keeps generous company.