The Ochoco National Forest is located in Central Oregon in the United States, north and east of the City of Prineville, location of the National Forest Headquarters. It encompasses 850,000 acres (3,440 km2) of rimrock, canyons, geologic oddities, dense pine forests, and high desert terrain, as well as the headwaters of the North Fork of the Crooked River. A 1993 Forest Service study estimated that the extent of old growth in the Forest was 95,000 acres (38,000 ha).
In descending order of forestland area, it occupies lands within Crook, Harney, Wheeler, and Grant counties. The national forest also administers the Crooked River National Grassland, which is in Jefferson County.
The Ochoco National Forest is composed of three ranger districts:
- Crooked River National Grassland
- Paulina Ranger District, based outside of Paulina
- Lookout Mountain Ranger District, based in Prineville. This district is composed of the former Prineville and Big Summit Ranger Districts.
The former Snow Mountain Ranger District is now administered by the Malheur National Forest, as part of the Emigrant Creek Ranger District.
Read more about Ochoco National Forest: Wilderness, Recreation
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or forest:
“The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North-West for it. Nor yet wholly to them.... The job was a great national one.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die!”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)