Praying for Those in Authority: Deschutes County
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| Deschutes County, Oregon |
Deschutes County in the southwestern corner of the North Central Region of the state is the newest county in the state, sectioned off from Crook County in 1916. It was named after the river that runs through it, which was named after French-Canadian fur trappers that first explored the region in the early 1800s.
The Deschutes River begins in the Cascade Mountains
northwest of La Pine, then flows southward into a couple of reservoirs. From
the Wickiup Reservoir, the river goes northeast through Sunriver to the city of
Bend. From there it goes northward and is joined by the Metolius and Crooked Rivers,
forms one of the boundaries of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, and finally
empties into the Columbia River a few miles southwest of Biggs Junction.
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| Deschutes County, Oregon |
By the time Oregon became a state in 1859, the western
portion of the state, especially the Willamette Valley, was being settled and
towns were already established. The central portion of the state, however,
remained empty of immigrant settlers. In Deschutes County the first pioneers to
arrive were cattlemen. The first Europeans to spend a winter around Bend were a
group of cattlemen, Felix Scott Jr., Marion Scott, John Craig, and Robert
Millican. They were followed by more ranchers, farmers, and shepherds. Then
came merchants and entrepreneurs. The first commercial sawmill in the area was
established at Bend in 1901. The decades after saw the timber industry and
sawmills boom around Bend becoming some of the largest timber processing plants
in the world, which continued until the 1980s when the last of the mills
closed. Tourism has since become a dominant industry in the county.
According to The Historical Marker database,
the first church constructed in Bend was a Baptist church built in 1904. The
first service was held by Rev. O.W. Triplett.
Father Luke Sheehan, an Irish priest, arrived in Bend
in 1910 with another priest who did not stay there. Father Sheehan traveled by
horseback to visit his new parishioners, but eventually, the congregation
purchased an old schoolhouse in 1912 for $75 and established St. Francis
Catholic Church. The next building
built in 1920 is now over 100 years old, a historical building in downtown Bend, and is still in use.
Around the same time, the Methodist Church in Bend was
chartered. Their first church called the Little Brown Church – not to be
confused with a well-known one in Iowa - was built in 1912 and is still there
while the new church, known as Bend Church, has two services every Sunday.
The Deschutes Board of County Commissioners is made up
of three elected officials who serve for four-year terms. This is the policy-making
body of the county. Current board members are Anthony DeBone, Phil Chang,
and Patti Adair.
The County Sheriff is L. Shane Nelson. The
Sheriff’s Office was founded in 1916 and serves 210,000 residents in Deschutes
County. They have 265 personnel to provide service to 3,055 square miles of the
county. Special units include SWAT, Street Crimes, Marine Patrol, ATV Patrol,
Forest Patrol, and six K9 teams.
The Sheriff’s office recently received a grant to buy
Naloxone carrying cases and Naloxone Nasal spray for each sworn member of the
Sheriff’s office. This would help in the case of accidental exposure to
fentanyl in the course of their duties in the county. Fentanyl exposure to officers is a real and
growing danger. Continue to pray about the fentanyl epidemic.
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