Ashland Street Art

There's a small town in Northern Wisconsin called Ashland.  This little town has adopted a most interesting expression of history, art and community by painting extraordinary murals on the sides of buildings all over town.  The people come from old photographs of the period they were in...

A mural depicting the structure as it looked in 1892.

The side view of the mural above, it is very well done!

If you look closely you can see the building's brick and the painted over appearance of sand stone block...

Painted replicas of  old schools long gone...

A picture from the 1940's of some local ladies was the inspiration for this mural.

A huge canvas!  This mural captures a key piece of Ashland's history - at one time the World's longest "Oredock." Ships would anchor aside and chutes would rotate down allowing holds full of iron ore from nearby mines to fill the holds of vessels bound for Detroit and Cleveland where the iron ore made steel and fueled the industrial growth of the country.

Amazing... This mural is located near an old train depot.  Two railroads figured largely in Ashland's past.  The Great Northern and the Soo Line.

The people are represented from old photographs the loco is probably the last of the diesel units to roll down the tracks in this town, as the era of mining and the oredock are long gone.

Northern livery paint, amazing art...

An old aircraft hangar is depicted here from Ashland's early aviation history complete with personalities from the period.

A little jazz scene from the 20's...

This mural is a replica of what the main street looked like around the turn of the century (1900 ish)

Mining and logging were Ashland's largest industries and source of commerce.  In the late 1800's it is estimated that nearly 10,000 were employed in cutting timber and milling that timber into planks for the building of homes or the bolstering of tunnels in the mines.

A giant canvas, executed so very well...

How the mural looks from Main Street

A war memorial of citizens from the past...

The 1950's and some of Ashland's memories captured in this multi-paneled display

I personally find this one to be my favorite. 

In 1910, this store was a grocery, the scene depicts some patrons buying provisions.  I think the colors, or maybe the geometry of this mural really catches my eye...

Here we have a salute to the light house keepers from three different light houses in the area.  All of these lights are located on the Apostle Islands, a really wonderful place to hike and camp. The keepers and lights are from Devil's Island, Sand Island and Outer Island.

Being an engineer this stuff always grabs my attention.  Steam locomotives are amazing!

This is the 950, she was a ten wheeler - largest on the Iron Range!

A thing of beauty!  She pulled thousands of loaded cars full of iron ore and timber to the docks and worked into the 1950's where diesel power replaced her...

 Hope you all enjoyed this little trip to Ashland!

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