Central Oregon

Months after Oregon lawmakers approved $1 million for horse-racing facilities in Crook County, county officials still have not accepted the money and are now considering whether to ask the Legislature to change how the grant is awarded.

A company that supplied the Alfalfa Fire District with approximately $165,000 in new breathing equipment to protect firefighters says it has not been paid anything for the purchase more than half a year after the district publicly celebrated receiving the equipment that its former chief Chad LaVallee claimed was paid for through a federal FEMA grant.

Authorities are investigating an overnight burglary at Brasada Ranch after two people were reportedly caught attempting to steal alcoholic beverages from the resort's Ranch House early Wednesday morning.

As families prepare for the start of another school year, Crook County Christian School is seeing continued growth while also working to accommodate families left searching for new educational and childcare options following the abrupt closure of High Desert Christian Academy.

Newly released Crook County Fair Board records are providing substantially more detail about a previously undisclosed Funding Committee that met privately to discuss how Crook County should spend $1 million in state funding for horse-racing facilities

A group of 16 Alfalfa Fire District electors delivered a sweeping six-page rebuke of the district's leadership this week during a public meeting that also saw two new directors appointed to the embattled board and raised new questions about the embattled former Fire Chief Chad LaVallee's returning role in district operations.

On recent days in Prineville, smoke from the nearby Rowe Creek Complex wildfire feels “thick enough to cut with a knife,” said Beverly Friesen, an 81-year-old grandmother.

Editors, publishers, reporters and journalism advocates from across Oregon gathered last week at Central Oregon Community College for the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism's (FORJ) fourth annual Rural and Small-Town Journalism Conference

As destructive wildfires continue to burn across Oregon and the West, Oregon U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden are joining a bipartisan group of senators urging federal regulators to stop the expansion of prediction markets that allow people to wager on the course and impacts of wildfires.

The Alfalfa Fire District Board publicly questioned its own actions during a recent meeting after board members appeared unable to recall a vote taken just weeks earlier to delay appointments to two vacant board seats