A pair of Crater High grads who grew up in Gold Hill are at the helm of a brand-new eatery and a rebrand for the historic 1800s Gold Hill Hotel.

The hotel-turned-restaurant at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Dardanelles Street opened in mid-March as Massey’s Bar & Grill — and they pulled a coup when they recruited a chef from the former Jacksonville Inn Restaurant, which closed in January.

The owners offer

an eclectic mix of fine

dining and comfort

foods, and plan to offer a variety of fun activities and even some casino games.

Newly minted restauranteur Christian Massey, who runs a construction company, and manager Zack Doggett say they noticed the building for sale in January.

Run as Guadalajara’s and later Miguel’s for most of the past two decades, the location was host to a Fourth Avenue Sports Bar for a few months last year. When it closed in October, the building went up for sale.

“I sent him a picture of the for-sale sign, and he was like, ‘I know, I put an offer in on the building,’” Doggett said of Massey.

“I was like, ‘No you did not!’ Then I told him if he bought the building and opened a restaurant, I’d manage it for him.”

Childhood friends, Doggett and Massey grew up on the river and the nearby city beach, both graduating from Crater High School and staying in the area.

“I grew up in the same house I’m now raising my three kids in,” Doggett noted.

The pair agreed on saving the old hotel so it would be a fun place to go at the heart of their hometown. The men remember countless dinners at Guadalajara’s and always liked the building.

“There’s definitely a lot of history here,” Massey said.

“I grew up on the river out here on Second Street. It’s always just been a big part of the town, the place to go for a good meal and to just hang out.”

While working on renovations to update the inside and modernize the restrooms, Massey finalized purchase of the building nearly the same week that he heard the news that the Jacksonville Inn Restaurant had shuttered.

Massey — at the urging of Doggett’s mother — was able to recruit chef Ben Croteau to help open Massey’s March 14. A Rhode Island native, Croteau was excited to help debut the valley’s newest eatery. A chef at Jacksonville Inn when it closed in mid-January, Croteau said he had cooked for Doggett’s mom.

“She liked my cooking. She would come in with a group of friends, and I would turn menu items into gluten-free for them. The same week they closed the doors in Jacksonville, they had just started thinking about how they were gonna hire people here, so it worked out,” said Croteau, noting it was exciting to offer something new and different in a place that “hasn’t done anything besides Mexican food and mozzarella sticks” for decades.

“It’s pretty exciting. We’re trying different things on the menu, see what works. We’re putting out really good food in a kitchen that’s not really meant to do that, but I’ve always liked challenges, and people have been really stoked with the food so far, which feels good,” Croteau said.

“The (Jacksonville) Inn was a more direct target of customers. This new place has a wider variety, so we’re trying different things out with our initial menu to see what people like.”

Croteau said everything from burgers and prime rib to dinner salads and seafood offerings — from calamari to halibut — are already on the menu.

Some favorites with customers during the first month in business include the chicken marsala — made with morel mushrooms — a spicy gorgonzola burger and an ahi tuna stack.

Doggett said he hoped to brainstorm some lunch specials for people who hang out at the local river beach and have special events, from comedy shows and concert nights to a “two-wheel Tuesday,” with $1 off drinks and appetizers.

“The beach is always packed. There will be like 200 or 300 people on a weekday in the middle of summer. If we have times where we’re not super busy, I could run orders down to the beach,” said Doggett. “We just want to be the go-to place. We’re super stoked to really get things going. What we’ve got set up here already … you can’t even find that in Medford anymore.”

Massey’s features a fine dining area, a family-friendly space, a game room and full bar. A sign outside boasts, “Come for the Food, Stay for the Beer.”

Massey’s hours are noon to 8 p.m. daily.

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Just The Facts

HISTORY OF THE HOTEL

A.J. Barlow decided in the spring of 1887 that he would build a large hotel at Gold Hill. A section foreman for the Oregon and California Railroad at Gold Hill, Barlow built his Barlow Hotel along the railroad tracks in the heart of town, according to the April 13, 1887, edition of the Oregon Sentinel.

A second hotel, known as both Fitzgerald’s and the Union Hotel, at the corner of Chavner and Fourth avenues, was constructed at the same time, one block over.

The March 2, 1888, Democratic Times reported Barlow’s “fine, large hotel” was outfitted in “first-class style” with “the best of meals always furnished to their lodgers.”

Less than a decade later, Oscar Swacker purchased the hotel and doubled the size of the building. The hotel’s massive bar, made in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1865, was shipped around the Horn and on to Portland, then shipped by train to Gold Hill, around the same time period.

The hotel changed hands more than a dozen times over the next century, in more recent decades run by former Las Vegas pit boss Pete Arnold and his wife, Anna. For most of the past 20 years, it was run as Guadalajara’s, then Miguel’s — both Mexican restaurants.

The bar remains in Massey’s, with a bullet hole, shot through the bar in 1974 by a jealous husband, according to Southern Oregon historian Linda Legler.