Nestled in the tiny Southern Oregon coastal town of Port Orford is the home base of Oregon Kelp Alliance (ORKA), self-described bull kelp defenders. This non-profit consortium of scientists, fishing enterprises, ecotour operators, regional organizations, and divers are attempting to reverse … Read more

Small town journalism may be a calling but it’s a business, too, and newspapers live with the same economic forces that often dog enterprise in rural Oregon. Read more

When Aspen Springs Psychiatric Hospital opened in Hermiston last fall, it was hailed as a sorely-needed addition to the state’s meager supply of mental health treatment beds. Read more

Madison Morgan’s pickup truck was busted up, but at least she got some fresh venison out of the deal. Read more

BANDON ─ Since its inception in 2012, the Wild Rivers Coast Alliance has been supporting the South Coast’s environment and conservation needs. Read more

When Amber Latham moved to Pendleton as program director for the new branch of Oregon Recovery and Treatment Center in 2019, there wasn’t a lot of awareness among local officials about the opioid problems the community faced. Read more

On a gravel road in the Dry Creek neighborhood of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Dorothy Thurby visits the site of a recent waterline break. A pile of mud and pipes is all that remained following days of water leakage. Read more

While an extreme example, the Holiday Farm Fire illustrates what steps are required to bring a conflagration under control, from initial attack to final containment. Read more

Oregon Institute of Technology is coordinating with the Klamath Tribes to try to save endangered Lost River and shortnose suckers while using energy efficiencies to power the process. Read more

After a devastating year of COVID, of protests, of the election, what I may be the most tired of is hearing “I just can’t understand…” Read more

Bryan Harper is a fifth-generation farmer, vice chairman of the Oregon Board of Agriculture and former president of the Lane County Farm Bureau. He’s also a pilot, former sprinter for the University of Oregon and one of only a few young Black farmers in the state. Read more

As a sovereign nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation didn’t have to follow Gov. Kate Brown’s stay home orders and shut down any of its government facilities or enterprises to slow the spread of COVID-19. Read more

Rural institutions, with their can-do character, are every bit as critical to the pandemic response as urban institutions. Read more

There’s nothing like a pandemic, closed restaurants and masked lines outside grocery stores to make Oregonians rethink the food system. Read more

Rural healthcare is getting a makeover. Read more

Rural Oregon is being impacted by the COVID-19 in a variety of ways. Read more

On a windy February morning, the Northwest Connector, a bus running a route through northwestern Oregon, whizzed between coastal cities. Riders were commuting to work, returning from the hospital, en route to get groceries, out for recreation. Read more

With the trend of young people leaving rural communities, Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) member Emma Gerona, 23, is part of the team bringing back a youthful energy to revitalize these communities. Read more

The term “boarding school” elicits the vision of elite British chambers or a school for troubled delinquents, but in rural Oregon a boarding school is a necessity to help the students in the area receive an education despite the distance. Read more

Aaron Jackson, lamprey project lead, is clearly a passionate, knowledgeable, and utterly patient man. He has to be — he has dedicated his working life to a sacred and maligned, complex and long-living species with the deck stacked against its survival. Read more

College students studying Oregon’s urban-rural divide knew they would find contrasts between Portland and Eastern Oregon. What they didn’t expect was how much the two regions have in common, from high rents and the lack of affordable housing to the popularity of farmers’ markets. Read more

When Hermiston School District submits demographic data to the Oregon Department of Education, sometimes they get a call letting them know they made a mistake — they marked “English” as the predominate language of origin spoken by the district’s largest racial minority. Read more

MORO, Ore. — In Sherman County, Ore., every family gets a gift at Christmas time. Read more

FOSSIL — It was the kind of mass trauma that sends a shudder through rural Oregon’s medical infrastructure. Read more

Along Oregon roads and highways, crop identification signs help drivers recognize what’s growing and living in fields they pass. Potatoes, hazelnuts, honey bees. Read more

“The loggers who came here with their trucks – in very, very large numbers – was a political phenomenon that will be always very memorable. They were here all day, circling the Capitol.” Read more

Tourists who visit the coast and other summer destinations often want to leave with a taste of Oregon. Read more

This is more than a story of “the little city that could.” It is a story of persistence, serendipity and a public-private partnership that works. Read more

When Tom Hottman’s father was dying of cancer, he said that his mother vehemently opposed the idea of bringing in hospice care — a service she called “death watch.” Read more

Wild horses and burros are a staple of the American West, an ideal so revered that even Congress in the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 described the animals as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit.” Read more

As tourism grows along the Oregon Coast, so does the prevalence of vacation rentals. Read more

The average lifespan for a person living in rural communities is four years less than individuals living in urban or suburban areas, according to Grant Niskanen, vice president of medical affairs for Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls. Read more

The city of Ontario, on Oregon’s eastern edge, pays some of the highest employee retirement costs in the state. Read more

LA GRANDE — Eastern Oregon University’s recent designation as Oregon’s rural university is just the beginning of President Tom Insko’s vision for the 89-year-old institution. Read more

Legislators say rural Oregon has a voice at the Capitol, but how much it is heard or understood is open to debate. Read more

If you think metropolitan Oregon is diverse, consider rural Oregon. Read more