Crook County 10/3/25

We do things differently in the Ednold family, and things don’t always make sense at first glance.  Let me give you just one example:  Ma Ednold passed from this earthly world a few years back.  I know lots of people say that they have, or had, the best mom in the world, but I really did, and nobody who ever knew her would argue that point with me.  There has never been a more kind and loving soul, so for some reason the family has chosen to commemorate her birthday each year by participating in a thoroughly masochistic ritual that involves spending most of an entire day, including the dead of night, walking around over many miles of the central Oregon high desert countryside as fast as we can.  The discomforts produced by this pursuit are numerous and varied, but this is the way we have chosen to remember our dear mother.  I will say that it does bring us together, and Ma probably gets a good laugh out of it, so in the end it serves its purpose well.  And since we have to spend a few days in central Oregon, it also presents a perfect opportunity to see some central Oregon high school football, so this week I had the chance to see a game at Crook County High School.

Crook County Courthouse

Crook County has been around since it was carved from Wasco County in 1882 and named for General George Crook.  Since then the formation of Jefferson and Deschutes Counties have eaten into its size, but the county seat is still Prineville, as it was when the county was formed.  There had been a post office in Prineville since the early 1870’s and the original plat for the town was filed in 1877.  Three years later it was incorporated.  It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time when Prineville was THE town in central Oregon.  Redmond (1904) and Bend (1905) weren’t incorporated until much later, and in the late 19^th century Prineville was the largest town in the region.  However, when the train tracks were laid for the rail line south from The Dalles in 1911, they bypassed Prineville, which was a death sentence for many towns during that period.  But the residents were determined that Prineville was not going to become a ghost town, and built their own railroad to link them with the main line 20 miles away, and the town was able to survive.

The place was originally just called Prine, after Barney Prine, but was soon changed to Prineville.  If you’ve ever wanted a town named after you, one way is to have a big-shot dad who will name the newly created town after you, like Echo Koontz did.  If that’s not an option, you may want to try the Barney Prine method.  Barney was the first merchant in what became Prineville, and here is a snippet from Oregon Geographic Names regarding how Prine got his name attached to his community:  “His stock consisted of a barrel of first rate whisky in the front room of his establishment and some blacksmithing equipment in the back room.  The prevailing opinion around Prineville is to the effect that most of the business was done in the front room.”   So, there you go.

Prineville began as a cattle ranching community, and farming soon took off also where the water was adequate.  Logging also played a large part in the  Prineville economy for a long time but, as was the case with many Oregon communities, the timber industry plays a much smaller role there these days.  That revenue has been replaced, though, in a very 21^st century way.  Both Apple and Facebook have opened data centers in Prineville and have contributed nicely to the local economy.  Although tire giant Les Schwab moved its headquarters from Prineville to Bend almost 20 years ago, they still maintain a large distribution center in Prineville, and the town gives every appearance of being a prosperous little place of 11,000 people or so.

The rest of the family having begged off to prepare for the upcoming early morning torture, I was on my own as I took the left turn off the Ochoco Highway as it wound its way down into the Crooked River valley.  From there, The Bucket climbed through Ochoco Wayside State Park to the Ochoco View Point, where you can stand and look out over the entire valley and see for dozens of miles in every direction.  I couldn’t read the COWBOYS sign on the back of the football grandstand from there, but I could pick out the stadium itself, in blue and gold surrounded by light poles.

I got back on the Ochoco Highway and drove east down into the town toward the school.  Prineville has those wide streets that give it the feel of an authentic western town that had plenty of room for lots of horse and wagon traffic back when that was important, and if I had to guess I'd say that the city council is populated by a bunch of neat freaks, and I mean that in the best way.  It’s a tidy place where the hedges are trimmed and the sidewalks are clean.  Sadly, you can’t say that for a lot of places and, at least on this night, Prineville had a conspicuously uncluttered look about it.

Tidy or not, the town threw me a little when I got to the school and found that the football field isn’t located there.  Crook County High School, with its district stretching the entire area of the county, has been around since 1902, but the current iteration was built in 1996, and has benefited from a lot of that money from Apple and Facebook.  It’s an impressive building, and the CC written in big white letters on the rimrock to the south are pretty cool, but the football team still plays its games at the old Ward Rhoden Stadium located a few blocks away near Crooked River Elementary School.  Rhoden was the manager of a Prineville lumber company in the mid-1900’s, and was a big supporter of Cowboys sports.  When they built the stadium in the early 70’s they honored Ward by putting his name on it, and it’s still the Cowboys’ home stadium.

There aren’t a lot of famous athletes from Prineville, but former major leaguer Wally Backman lived there long enough to get arrested for domestic violence many years ago, and Darrel Aschbacher attended Crook County High School and was a member of their 1952 state championship football team.  He then played for the U of O on their trip to the 1958 Rose Bowl before a one-season career with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1959.  And speaking of fame, did you know that Prineville is the unofficial Rockhound Capital of the entire country?  I, personally, was unaware of that fact. 

Despite being able to see the lights from a few blocks away, it took some looking around to find the entrance to the parking lot on SE 2^nd St., and I found a spot in the elementary school parking lot.  There’s a ticket booth near the big entrance archway into the stadium, but it was closed, and when the nice lady offered me a program and I asked how much I owed her, she informed me that there was no charge.  I didn’t protest, and followed the crowd to find a seat on the aluminum bleachers in the large, uncovered wood/concrete grandstand.  Though there are a few small portable bleachers on the visitors’ side of the field, it looked like the most visitors from Mountain View had staked out a section on the far south end of the stands, with the Crook County band next to them, so I stayed in the north section and had a comfy view surrounded by blue and gold clad Cowboy fans.  The natural grass field is surrounded by a rubber running track.  I couldn’t see much of the cheerleaders below to my right, but I could hear the band at just the right volume from their place a few sections south of me.

On the side of the grandstand is a sign proudly stating that Crook County won a 3A championship in 1984, but it doesn’t mention that they also won a pair of class A-2 state championships in 1952 and 1953.  Last year they had their first winning season in a long time, going undefeated before losing in the first round of the playoffs, but were off to a 2-2 start this season, with the tough Mountain View Cougars coming to town.  Both teams play in the 5A-Intermountain Conference with all of the teams from Redmond and Bend, and Mountain View’s only loss had been a close one to the perennially powerful team from Summit.

It was a comfortably warm evening with the sun sporadically poking through the overcast as the teams took the field, and there was lots of enthusiastic cheering as the Cowboys caught the opening kickoff and their offense took the field.  Unfortunately, after their quarterback threw an interception on the very first play, there was no gradual deflation of the Cowboys fans; it was sudden and proved to be lasting.  It was as if they knew that getting off to a good start was crucial, and hanging with the Cougars early was essential to have any chance of winning the game.  A few plays later the Cougars were in the end zone, and the rout was on.  There would be more interceptions, and fumbles, and punts that were blocked, and mistakes in defensive coverages.  It was a sad exhibition by the Cowboys in all three phases of the game, and if there was a fourth phase the Cougars probably would have beaten them at that too.  The halftime score was 35-0 in favor of Mountain View, and I think all of us in the stands felt the game wasn’t really as close as that score. 

The silver lining to all of this was that I was able to make a break for the concession stand without worrying about missing too much on the field, and I did just that in the middle of the second quarter.  The basket of nachos was excellent, but the star of that show was the volunteer staff working the counter.  Someone in Crook County has spent some serious time developing a pull-card system for taking and filling the orders, and the whole place runs like clockwork.  I placed my order, was given a card that I could redeem at the next window for my food, and before I could even get there a lady was holding it out for me to grab.  If the football team was half as efficient and executed half as well they would be pretty darn good.  When I went back after the third quarter for my popcorn and coffee the experience was much the same.

Since before the game even began, the game announcer had alerted us to be on the lookout for cheerleaders in the stands selling raffle tickets for a drawing that would be held at halftime.  Since I hadn't paid anything to get into the game I felt like I should at least buy a few raffle tickets, and I wouldn’t have minded winning some of the Crook County swag they were giving as prizes, even though I knew my luck would never allow that to happen.  I never did see a cheerleader in our section, and as halftime drew near that same announcer suggested we “chase down a cheerleader” if we had to, and make our purchase before the drawing.  Chasing down a cheerleader would not have been a good look for me, so I never was able to get my hands on any of those tickets, but the athletic director did draw a ticket out of the bucket and somebody else won something. 

That drawing took about half a minute, and there were no other halfime festivities for us, so I wandered around  on the track eating my nachos and wondering if the Cowboys’ coaches had any tricks up their sleeves that they’d been saving for the second half.  Before long I learned that the answer to my question was “apparently not”.  The clock ran continuously in the second half and the Cowboys did manage a score in each of the final quarters while only giving up one more touchdown to the Cougars.  After each Cowboy score there was a deafening canon blast from somewhere at the south end of the field, which will give you a small heart attack if you’re not expecting it.  It’s a nice touch, though, and I would have liked to have heard more of it. 

Even with the canon, the spirit was gone from the home fans long before the Cowboys got on the board, and I think if they’d have taken a vote by secret ballot at the end of the third quarter the players, coaches and fans for both teams would have chosen to just pack up and go home.  I’m glad they didn’t, though.  It was a relatively warm night, about perfect for a football game, and I still hadn’t finished my popcorn and coffee at that point.  The second and third string players probably all got a chance to play, which is kind of exciting for them and their parents, and the final 42-13 score was a lot closer than I would have guessed at halftime.

It was a large crowd, with the grandstand mostly full, and just about all of them stayed until the very end.  It wasn’t the best showing for a Cowboys team that might be going through a rebuilding season, but at least they all got to go home and sleep in in the morning.  I, on the other hand, would be up in a few short hours, so I may have broken a few speed limits as The Bucket took me back up that long incline out of the Crooked River valley and sped west.