city, seat (1882) of Crook county, central Oregon, U.S., on the Crooked River near Ochoco Creek. Settled in 1868 and named for Barney Prine, the first settler, it was laid out in 1870. One of the few municipally owned railroads in the United States, the City of Prineville Railway, has 19 miles (31 km) of main line and connects to commercially owned railroad lines just north of Redmond. Prineville is the centre for a livestock-raising and lumbering area. The Ochoco National Forest, with headquarters in Prineville, and the Prineville Reservoir State Park are nearby. The city is nearly surrounded by rimrocks; agates, obsidian, petrified wood, and other stones abound in the Ochoco Mountains, and Prineville is well known to mineral collectors as the site of an annual Rockhound Powwow. Inc. 1880. Pop. (1990) 5,355; (2000) 7,356.