A barn fire off Emigrant Creek Road Monday afternoon burned nearly all of what was left of the 88-year-old ginkgo tree in Ashland that was cut down to make room for the library expansion in 2001.

Wood from the ginkgo tree, two cedars and one Douglas fir cut during the expansion had cured in former mayor Alan DeBoer's warehouse for two years before it was moved to the Emigrant Creek barn.

"Part of it (the gingko) is in the Ashland Public Library in a sculpture," said Bryan Holley, an Ashland tree commissioner who fought to save the tree. "Some of the seeds got propagated in town, and other ones went to a lady in the Netherlands."

Many Ashland residents wanted to save the gingko. The tree commission voted it tree of the year in 2000, and a tree sitter spent time in a nearby cedar trying to stave off chainsaws.

The fire that destroyed the wood started in a barn belonging to Doug Neuman shortly before 3 p.m. Monday and spread to the outlying grass. Jackson County Fire District No. 5 Division Chief Darin Welburn said crews arrived to find the barn engulfed in flames. Fire trucks from the Oregon Department of Forestry, Ashland Fire and Rescue and Jackson County arrived to help. Crews extinguished the fire within about 45 minutes, Welburn said.

Investigators said on Tuesday that they could not determine what started the fire, which caused about $20,000 damage.

The wood from the gingko tree had been brought to Neuman's property by a work party organized by City Councilwoman Cate Hartzell in 2004. Hartzell said she had been working with Amy Blossom at the Ashland library trying to find woodworkers to craft something out of the tree.

The library needed a table, Hartzell said, and she hoped local artists would have additional ideas to respond to the request for a proposal. For now, it appears too late for the ginkgo tree.

DeBoer said he had not seen the lumber from his storage shed since it was moved. One of his ideas had been to make keepsakes out of the ginkgo wood to give to visiting local dignitaries.

"I'm sorry to see it gone," DeBoer said. "It's a shame somebody didn't do something with it."

John Weston, Ashland High School woodshop teacher, had taken some wood out of the barn with a student who was going to make a bookcase for the library. Weston said they took out some cedar, fir and 60 or 70 board feet of ginkgo.

"We'll have one piece representative of the tree," Weston said.

Daily Tidings writer Alan Panebaker can be reached at 482-3456 x 227 or apanebaker@dailytidings.com.