09/03/2023
Prineville, the county seat of Crook County, sits on ceded land once belonging to members of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, displaced by the Treaty of 1855. The town is located on the Crooked River at the mouth of Ochoco Creek in the Crooked River Caldera.
The town was founded in 1870 by Monroe Hodges, on a section of his land claim. It was named for Frances Barney Prine, the town’s first merchant, who in 1868 built “a dwelling house, store, blacksmith shop, hotel, and saloon.”
The first post office for the town of Prine was established on April 13, 1871; William Heisler was the first postmaster. The name was changed to Prineville on December 23, 1872. With the creation of Jefferson County in 1914 and Deschutes County in 1916, Crook County shrunk substantially in size, from 8,600 to 2,991 square miles.
In 1952, former newspaperman Les Schwab purchased his first tire store in Prineville and soon opened tire shops in nearby Bend and Redmond. As of 2015, the Les Schwab Tire Center chain boasted 478 stores throughout the western states. Schwab, who died in 2007, lived with his family on an 80,000-acre ranch southeast of Prineville.
Agriculture and forestry are its dominant industries, with more recent developments in tourism, recreation, and high-tech computer server farms strengthening its economy. The diverse geology of the Prineville area has made it a popular rock-hunting site. Both Facebook and Apple have installed server farms in the city, attracted by tax breaks and inexpensive power. The population of the town in 2020 was 10,736.
Credit: Oregon Encyclopedia
