Hubbard Brothers Hardware, one of Rogue Valley's last "old-fashioned" hardware stores, will celebrate its 100th anniversary this spring on the corner of Riverside Avenue and Main Street.
    The store has been in that location most of its 100 years. Brothers A. A. and A. C. Hubbard started the hardware company in Jacksonville early in 1884. [The business was started by their father, Fortunatus Hubbard.] The Hubbard Brothers came to Medford with the railroad later in 1884.
    The Hubbards first rented, for a short time, a building (where Lamport's Sporting Goods used to be) across Main Street and a block west from the present hardware store location. The Hubbard family built the present store and moved out after the rent increased 50 percent to $12 a month.
    John and Kathi Ehrlich have tried to preserve much of the store's history since they bought out Chet and Roland Hubbard, sons of A. C. Hubbard, on Feb. 1, 1972. Chet Hubbard died four days after signing over the store. However, Chet's widow, Mary, and Chet's brother, Roland, continue to live in Medford and continue to show interest in the store, Ehrlich said.
    Store displays will represent much of the store's history when the Ehrlichs hold a series of anniversary activities in the old building this spring.
    The two-story brick building literally marks a transition from horse and buggy sales to computerized orders.
    The second floor in Medford's early days was a buggy and farm implement display area and provided warehousing for hardware supplies hauled off the nearby train.
    The second-story floor still shows painted lines and numbers for warehousing goods.
    "In those earlier days if you didn't have it you wouldn't get it for awhile," Ehrlich said. "Now computers transmit the orders in minutes back to the Chicago headquarters of our co-op supplier--Ace Hardware--and a truck leaves the Yakima, Wash. warehouse the next day."
    So the former warehouse space consists now of a restaurant, Digger O'Dell's Country Steakhouse, and various leased-out office space.
    The Caterpillar and John Deere farm implement dealership separated from the hardware store building in the 1930s, according to Paul Culbertson pear growers and shipper and local historian. The late Tom Wray was implement sales manager.
    "John Deere himself came to Medford to set up the dealership with the Hubbards," Ehrlich said he learned from old newspaper accounts. [John Deere died in 1886 at age 82. It seems unlikely he was traveling the country in his 80s, setting up accounts. Hubbard's doesn't advertise being a John Deere dealer until 1898.]
    Despite the big surge to power tools and sophisticated gardening equipment, individual hardware items such as screws, bolts and fasteners continue as the "bread and butter" of the business, Ehrlich said.
    "People can still come and buy a single screw or bolt. That's what keeps this an old-fashioned hardware store. Of course, people have to go to the bins and pick those items out, but they don't seem to mind," Ehrlich said.
    Another change in recent years is packing of plumbing, electric and carpentry supplies for the do-it-yourself person.
    "Besides selling those items we gladly tell people now to use them," Ehrlich said.
    The separately operated and owned "Hobby Tree" hobby shop and Rogue Small Engine Repair in the basement also keep up with modern trends: more leisure time for hobbies and more engine-powered gardening implements.
    The sporting goods section also caters to the people with more leisure time.
    Allied to the hobby trend are pool table sales, installation and repair--a major hardware store activity now.
    Some automotive supplies long ago replaced buggy and buggy part sales. This category, too, aims at the do-it-yourself person.
    The role of the hardware store manager has broadened. Ehrlich also calls himself a property manager, since he leases out both second floor and basement space to various individuals and companies.
    Perhaps Ehrlich's background ideally prepares him for his expanding role. He has a college degree in business and industry management. Also, he worked for Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical company, as traffic services manager.
    Ehrlich, a native Oregonian, was born in Portland and grew up in Newport.
    As a historic Medford business Hubbard Brothers has its roots deep into the community, and Ehrlich plans to continue meeting the needs of modern customers.
Medford Mail Tribune, February 19, 1984, page C11

    Buggies and wagons were the main stock in trade in the early days of the century-old firm that evolved into Hubbard's Hardware.
    But would one of the longtime owners of Hubbard Brothers, now retired, like to go back to Medford's horse and buggy days?
    "Nothing doing," exclaims Roland A. Hubbard, 87-year-old Medford native, who as a boy had the task of dusting off the buggies on Saturday mornings before the farmers, prospective customers, arrived in town.
    "Those were pleasant days," recalls Hubbard, whose grandfather, Fortunatus Hubbard Sr., founded the business in 1884. "I had a lot of fun. But that's too slow. Buggies would get you only 30 miles a day."
    The son of Asahel C. and Rena Knowles Hubbard, Roland was born on Jan. 30, 1898, in a home not far away from the store. Roland's formal association with the firm began in the 1920s after service in the Army and 1½ years at Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University).
    He was a partner with his father, and eventually with his younger brother, Chester, (now deceased) and his son Robert, retiring from active participation about 25 years ago.
    The Hubbards sold the hardware store at the corner of Main Street and Riverside Avenue to John and Kathi Ehrlich in 1972.
    The store has been at the same location for most of the century of its existence. Fortunatus, however, began business in a rented frame building on the other side of Main just a little farther west.
    Buggies and wagons would arrive in oak and hickory crates, which would be lifted in a hand-operated elevator to the second floor, says Roland Hubbard. Saturday was the busiest day of the week at the store.
    The Hubbards also sold farm implements. Roland notes that the firm weathered the depression of the mid-1890s and that the early 1900s were prosperous years.
    At Klamath Falls, the Hubbards traded wagons, mowers and rakes for horses and brought the animals to Medford to break and sell.
    Roland says the big turning point for Hubbards came with introduction of the automobile. Touring cars replaced buggies, and wagons gave way to trucks, he says.
    A jeweler named Elwood brought the first auto to Medford in [1903]. Hubbard says the three-cylinder Lamport [sic] was the object of some derision. [Though Elwood did later become a Lambert dealer, an early photo reveals Medford's first car to have been a Baldner.] It was labeled "Elwood's pushmobile" because it often had to be pushed home.
    The Hubbards themselves acquired a four-cylinder Buick in 1908.
    When Henry Ford came out with the $450 Model T in 1911, that was the end of the buggy business, says Hubbard. Wagon sales remained good until World War I, but as they dwindled business became seasonal, Hubbard says, because most farm implement trade was in spring and summer.
    To fill the gap and create year-round sales, the Hubbards began to add hardware to their stock. When hardware sales began to outstrip farm machinery, the implements were relegated to the basement, Hubbard says. The upstairs, where buggies and wagons had been, was used for other storage.
    The implement business was moved to a nearby location on South Riverside Avenue and became Hubbard-Wray Company. The Hubbards and partner Tom Wray sold out in 1962.
    Of his early years, Roland recalls that the Hubbard families in town were among the first to install electric lights and that the firm was the first Medford store to have a telephone--even though their customers didn't.
    He tells of swimming in Bear Creek in the late spring. The water was too polluted later on. He attended movies at the [Savoy] nickelodeon on Front Street. He attended the Washington and North (Lincoln) grade schools and the high school at Fifth and Bartlett streets. When Merrick's Natatorium was built there was swimming in the summer and bowling, dancing and skating for entertainment. Hubbard remembers the first airplane here. It took off and landed at a field west of town.
    When Hubbard's acquired the Shell Oil franchise, Roland and a cousin, Earl Hubbard, required an entire day to hand-pump gasoline from the railroad tank car into storage located where Timber Products Company is now. They would distribute the fuel to local garages.
    Once they rounded up pigs in the Table Rock area in payment of a debt and fattened them at the storage site.
    Fortunatus Hubbard decided to come to Oregon when his store in Dallas [Center], Iowa, failed. A son-in-law had extended too much credit and spent too much money on liquor, Roland Hubbard says. He adds that the stigma of bankruptcy was "like going to prison."
    As a clerk in a Jacksonville store in 1883, Fortunatus saw a market for farm machinery and wagons in southern Oregon. He got his old acquaintance, John Deere, Moline, Ill. to ship the wagons, harrows and plows on credit. [Hubbard's was started in 1884 as an agency for D. M. Osborne implements and Studebaker wagons. John Deere products go unmentioned in Hubbard's frequent ads until 1898.]
    Fort Sr. died in 1894, leaving the business to his four sons. That's when it became Hubbard Brothers. Sons Alexis and Asahel assumed the management. Fortunatus Jr. found other employment in California, then returned in 1899. The other son, Otis, never was active in the business.
    Alexis later gave up management to work his timber claim and to farm. Fort Jr. sold his interest in the early 1920s.
Medford Mail Tribune, June 6, 1985, page 36