Facing Tough Times

“People in Prineville have learned not to expect too much.”

John Shelk, Managing Director of Ochoco Lumber

Facebook and Prineville, Ore., become friends

Prineville, Oregon (population 9,000) is facing tough times. Its five saw mills, which once employed 1,200 people, have closed. Les Schwab—the number two tire company in the United States whose headquarters have been in Prineville since 1952—is gone, too. In the last 18 months more than 1,000 residents have left the area, and unemployment is the highest in the state at about 20 percent.

But Prineville isn’t a town to give up—it’s not in its DNA. Founded in 1877, Prineville was a major player in Oregon, until it was snubbed in 1911 when the railroad bypassed the city and laid tracks to the south. Undaunted, the townsfolk raised money to lay their own track. The railroad did a booming business hauling nearby timber to market until the eventual decline of the timber industry. On the entertainment front, the town has boasted a pretty little movie theater, the Pine Theater, since 1938. It was shuttered in the 1980s after an easement dispute, but a couple of newcomers with a can-do attitude slogged through the paperwork, legal requirements, and renovation, and reopened the Pine Theater in 2007. In 2010, the theater opened a second screen.

This month Prineville got a much needed economic boost when Facebook opened its first data center in a brand spanking new building. The town threw a big bash and invited lots of locals, state officials, and a couple of Facebook executives—even Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was on hand. Facebook, which will employ around 35 folks, isn’t going to save the town, but it’s a big help. In fact, building the data center employed more than 1,300 temporary workers, half of whom were from the Prineville area. And the site is large enough for future expansion.

Yep, Prineville is facing tough times, but it’s not like it hasn’t done that before. And with the friends it’s got, you gotta like its chances for success.

Sources:

Facebook and Prineville, Ore., become friends
Prineville, Oregon Wikipedia page
The Pine Theater [This sites gives a nice little history of the theater]
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook visits Prineville Data Center and community party