J Bar J Boys Ranch in northeast Bend opened 50 years ago this month as a place for at-risk teenagers to learn responsibility and become more self-sufficient.

Today, the 40-acre ranch is the largest Central Oregon service provider for youth and families.

J Bar J Youth Services now encompasses the ranch and six other programs, including Big Brothers Big Sisters, a school for at-risk girls in Sisters and Grandma’s House, a shelter for teen parents.

Lyle Jarvis, 87, founded the J Bar J Boys Ranch in 1968 with his wife, Mary, and friend, Bill Jones, who worked for Deschutes County’s juvenile division at the time.

J Bar J gets its name from Jarvis and Jones.

Jarvis, who stepped away from the ranch in the mid-1970s, returned Friday to celebrate the 50th anniversary and take in the ranch’s 29th annual Oregon High Desert Classics, an elite equestrian competition and fundraiser. He currently lives on a ranch east of John Day.

Jarvis was working as an administrator at Bend High School when the county wanted to open a facility to supervise troubled teenagers without keeping them in a jail. The county-owned ranch opened, and hired Jarvis and Jones to run the property.

The boys, 13 to 18, took academic classes at the ranch, learned to cook and clean and did some ranch work, including using a combine harvester to make oats, Jarvis said.

“There were things they had to do and they were expected to do,” Jarvis said. “It wasn’t just the physical labor. It was getting along with each other and really becoming a part of a family.”

Jarvis said he never expected the ranch to grow into the multi-program operation it is today.

“We knew that there was a need for this kind of a place,” Jarvis said. “But the staff has taken that beyond our wildest dreams.”

Stephanie Alvstad, executive director of J Bar J Youth Services, started working at the ranch in 1989, when it partnered with the Cascade Youth & Family Center, which provides services for adolescents and their families.

Alvstad said the ranch added more partnerships in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the ranch became an affiliate of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and in 1995 it started the The Academy in Sisters, the school for at-risk young girls.

Since then, the ranch has worked with Safe Families for Children, a foster care program, and merged last year with Grandma’s House, the shelter for teen parents.

The teenagers at the J Bar J ranch and in the other residents programs take classes and learn techniques to address behavioral problems, Alvstad said.

In recent years, many of the teenagers have come in with anxiety, depression and insecurity related to problems with social media. Teenagers are being bullied online, or have a problem disconnecting from their video games, cellphone or internet, Alvstad said.

Many of the programs focus on helping the teenagers be more active and social away from the internet, so ranch employees take away their phones. The teenagers must earn their cellphone time, Alvstad said.

“Let’s police ourselves a little bit,” Alvstad said. “Let’s be able to put it down and have dinner together.”

Over the five decades, many former residents have found their way back to visit. A businessman from Chicago who lived at the ranch 30 years ago recently visited, along with a firefighter and an Army ranger, Alvstad said.

Many of the teenagers in the programs go on to fulfilling careers, she said.

“The longer you are here, the more you are going to see stuff like that,” Alvstad said. “That’s the really fun, rewarding piece.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7820, kspurr@bendbulletin.com