Ochoco Preserve protects one mile of the Crooked River, 1 mile of Ochoco Creek, and 1 mile of McKay Creek, and surrounding meadow and wetland habitat. As one of the highest value ecological sites on the Crooked River, Ochoco Preserve provides habitat for salmon and steelhead, small mammals, amphibians, and a wide variety of bird species.

Ochoco Preserve also protects important cultural connections for the local community. The Preserve is highly visible from Highway 26, and conserving it helps protect the scenic character of the region while also offering accessible recreation (with its associated health benefits!) for the community of Prineville. The Land Trust is in the process of establishing trails and connecting these trails via a bridge over the Crooked River to the City of Prineville’s Crooked River Wetlands Complex (learn more about the Ochoco Preserve Project). This trail network will help provide complementary educational and access opportunities at Ochoco Preserve. Finally, Ochoco Preserve helps mitigate the impacts of climate change by helping store CO2 and by growing native vegetation that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Land conservation is climate action!

 

The Land Trust manages Ochoco Preserve to protect and, where necessary, restore fish and wildlife habitat. The Land Trust acquired the Preserve in 2017 and current restoration efforts are focused on:

Managing weeds. Noxious weeds are a reality throughout Central Oregon. Without active management these weeds can compromise healthy native plant communities. We're managing weed populations along roadsides, irrigation ditches, and our Preserve boundaries to help reduce the spread of weeds within the Preserve and onto neighboring properties.

Habitat restoration and community connections. With portions of the Crooked River, McKay Creek, and Ochoco Creek, Ochoco Preserve has significant potential for restoring habitat for fish and wildlife and connecting the community to the Preserve. Learn more about our vision for the future of Ochoco Preserve and find updates on the project underway at the Preserve.

 

Ochoco Preserve can only be visited on guided Land Trust tours or via hosted educational offerings.

 

The map below shows the location of Ochoco Preserve. Access to Ochoco Preserve is currently limited to guided Land Trust tours and hosted educational offerings. 

 

From time immemorial, Native Americans, including the Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute tribes, lived in this region or visited it to hunt, fish, gather foods, and trade. Rimrock Ranch is within the lands ceded to the United States in the Treaty with the Tribes of Middle Oregon in 1855. The bands that signed the 1855 Treaty moved onto to the Warm Springs Reservation and are known as the Wasco and Warm Springs tribes. Paiute people began settling on the Warm Springs Reservation in 1879 and, along with the Wasco and Warm Springs tribes, now comprise the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, by virtue of the Treaty of 1855, have legal rights to harvest and manage wildlife and, by implication, the right to habitats suitable to support wildlife populations. The Land Trust considers the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs an important partner in management and restoration of the property.

The first Euro-American explorers, many of them trappers, arrived in the region during the early 1800s. Their journals tell the story of the Crooked River before settlement. Along the rivers and creeks, beaver dams and wetlands were abundant; grasses and willows thrived in rich soils replenished by flood waters; and salmon and steelhead thrived. The first Euro-American settlers arrived in the Ochoco Valley during the 1860s and used the valley for grazing livestock, mainly cattle and sheep. The soil was rich from the annual flooding and the native grasses were naturally irrigated. The early 1900s saw the beginning of irrigation and farming.

The Deschutes Land Trust established Ochoco Preserve in 2015.