BEND, OR -- May Historic Preservation Month. Local events are planned throughout Central Oregon, including walking tours, theatrical performances and even a vintage motocross event. 

Kelly Cannon-Miller, with the Deschutes Historical Museum, says preserving old buildings benefits the planet, "Demolition and wasting of resources isn’t where we need to be moving into the future. And, so you can think of preservation on the one hand as adaptive reuse and recycling of spaces and materials." She tells KBND News, "Giving historic buildings new life, and allowing them to work for you rather than ending up in a landfill and burning up the resources that it takes to create new materials."

On Thursday, actors portraying members of Redmond's founding families offer a glimpse into the past, while on a walking tour of historic downtown buildings that have been repurposed for local businesses. 

Cannon-Miller says preservation can also be artistic, "One of the things that we have in this month’s programming is a theater piece based on a story that’s 100 years old this year: the Lava Lake murders; and trying to figure out who the second murderer was in that horrific incident."

National Historic Preservation Month is spearheaded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "Each community celebrates in their own way, and you can find a variety of things happening around the country. A lot of effort goes into drawing attention to endangered places, which we very much still have that. For us, in Central Oregon, we’re always at risk of losing a resource," says Cannon-Miller. 

She notes archiving the past, "Can inform you about what your community needs to be working on - why are you the way you are? It can give you the materials to make art, it can give you a building a new building for a new purpose and keep your landfill clean. Historic preservation can be a lot of different things."

Click HERE for a schedule of events hosted by Historic Landmarks Commissions in various communities around the High Desert.