PRINEVILLE — Prineville, the bustling little town about 20 miles east of Redmond known for its quaint downtown, lovely open greenspaces and giant data centers, vaulted into the top 10 on the list of the most economically dynamic towns in the country.

The list was published in a report issued by Heartland Forward, a nonprofit focused on improving economic performance, which placed Prineville as number nine on the list of the Most Dynamic Micropolitans for 2022.

A micropolitan area is a town of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000 people. The population of Prineville is currently a little more than 11,000 people.

Heartland Forward ranked micropolitan areas across the United States by studying changes in key economic conditions from 2015 through 2020. The change in employment from September 2020 through September 2021, reflecting the community’s ability to rebound from the early months of the pandemic, was also a factor in the ranking.

Prineville resident Shawna West wasn’t familiar with the micropolitan ranking, but the city’s place on the list didn’t surprise her. The 28-year-old West was born in Bend but has lived in Prineville for 11 years. She works at Crooked Roots Brewing on N. Main Street, and said the town’s vintage feel and small-town vibe are two reasons she loves the place.

“Once you come into Prineville, you get the cute little vintage looking courthouse. You have the little vintage looking houses,” she said. “You have the fun, different food and breweries here, and even the boutique shops are nothing you would see in Bend.”

West said Prineville is a place “where you know everybody.”

“It is a nice community where there are actually more activities out there than what other people realize and know, so really every day something is going on, and it is a lot of fun,” she said.

Kalsey Lucas, the Prineville and Crook County director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, said Prineville was number 28 the last time the list of most dynamic micropolitans was published, in 2019. This year, the list focused primarily on pandemic recovery, and Crook County was the first county out of the 36 in Oregon to fully recover job losses from the pandemic, she said.

Prineville has also gone through some dramatic economic changes over the past few years, with the construction of data centers by Meta — formerly known as Facebook — and Apple. The data center industry has brought in a lot of supporting industries since its arrival.

“They have built a whole new economy since then,” Lucas said. “And looking at that, the companies that are creating the middle wage jobs in Prineville have been opened or rebranded, acquired, etc. in the past 10 to 15 years, so it is a relatively new economy despite being an older city compared to some of the other cities in Central Oregon.”

In 2011, Facebook opened its first corporate data center in town, and has since steadily expanded its operations. Apple began its plans for data centers in Prineville in 2012. Both companies played a major role in the region’s economic resurgence.

“A big part of the recovery from the pandemic specifically was the data center industry, so, information, construction and professional services jobs all pretty much immediately recovered and then some,” she said. “That has really provided a nice cushion for previous economic blows the area has experienced.” Prineville’s economic transformation has contributed to the growth in young families in the area, which in turn caused the Crook County School District to experience the highest growth rate in Central Oregon for a couple of years, Lucas said.

Josh Schroeder, 29, recently started a new job at Crooked River Elementary School as the school counselor. Schroeder, originally from the Los Angeles area, has lived in Prineville for almost a year. He had always valued a slower pace of life than what he found in Southern California, so he moved to Central Oregon.

“The biggest thing for me when I initially left Southern California, I wanted to get away from the culture there,” he said, while working on his laptop at Prineville Coffee Co. “It is very materialistic. It is super fast paced. Everyone is caught in the rat race of work so you can have the fanciest car, and the biggest house.”

Kim Daniels, the executive director of the Prineville Crook County Chamber of Commerce, said the business community is definitely growing, and there are more families because the cost of living is lower for the tri-county area.

“It still has a really small town feel,” Daniels said. “We don’t have a ski resort at our back door… a lot of what happens here is a different kind of recreation and tourism. In the past it was water sports, but what we have seen over the past few years is cycling, a lot of cycling that goes through our area, and lots of rockhounding.”

Daniels said her office sells rockhounding maps and during the more popular months will get around 70 people seeking information on where the best rockhounding can be found in the area. The horse races and the rodeo are also big draws for tourism and will bring the local hotels to full capacity, she said.

Daniels added the city and the county have gone out of their way to improve infrastructure, upgrade existing buildings, and improve recreational areas.

Jason Beebe, the mayor of Prineville, said Prineville has made the list of dynamic micropolitans for several years, partially because of the data centers and the jobs they have brought, but also because of the work being put into different restoration and conservation projects.

“For us it is not a competition. It is to set us up for the future and to secure those amenities for everyone. We have taken a proactive approach, and we plan on making it look better now and not reacting to it in the future,” Beebe added “We want it to be home, we want people to come here. Not only to visit Prineville but also for them to make Prineville their home and still have that small town feel.”