Declared surplus property by Jefferson County and facing the wrecking ball late last year, Madras’ historic Old Courthouse and adjacent county jail building were granted a last-minute reprieve when local resident Steve Jansen stepped in to save them. County commissioners, citing engineering reports suggesting the courthouse was unsafe and impractical to repair, made the property available for purchase, with demolition and redevelopment […]
Redmond Reimagines Historic School as New City Hall
Redmond’s historic Evergreen Elementary School, once the city’s educational and social center, is slated to be redeveloped into a new Redmond City Hall. Opened in 1922 as Union High School, the school provided the city with its first real school system, as all twelve grades had been housed at a single site prior to its […]
Going WAY Back to School
A small group of former students from a remote area northeast of Prineville have remained true to their school. When Lucy Woodward and other former students of the one room Howard School heard that the building could be facing demolition, they took matters into their own hands. Lucy, who attended the school in the 1950s, […]
Petersen Rock Garden Now Officially “Historic”
Central Oregon’s Petersen Rock Garden was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on October 30 after two years of intensive historic research and documentation. Located between Redmond and Bend in Central Oregon, the quixotic man-made landscape has been the subject of considerable media attention since the property’s listing as one of Oregon’s Most […]