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Buildings, pioneers and businesses wasted no
time uprooting and moving the entire town which they called El Reno. In
January, 1890, the first train arrived in the community, which quickly
became a rail center for the productive wheat harvests of Canadian
County. In March of 1890, El Reno was named the county seat.
In 1892 and again
in 1894, additional unassigned lands were opened up to settlers, which
brought more people to the new settlement of El Reno.
On August 6, 1901 the old Irving
School in El Reno was the site of the
lottery drawing for the last free territory land for settlement. These lands formerly allocated to the Wichita, Caddo,
Comanche,
Kiowa, and
Apache tribes
were the final lands opened to white settlers.
When
Route 66
was built, El Reno, like hundreds of its counterpart cities,
quickly obliged its many travelers with a crop of restaurants, motels and
service stations along the road.
Today, El Reno provides travelers with a peek at many old
icons of the
Mother Road
as well as a look at the
Old West. Take a ride on the Heritage Express Trolley, the only rail based trolley
in
Oklahoma and be sure to
visit the Canadian County Historical Museum in the fully restored old Rock
Island Depot, which features all manner of area history.
Heading west from
El Reno on
Route 66, the old highway
travels through a number of small towns that show the obvious suffering
that results from superhighways bypassing small towns.
The first
three,
Calumet,
Geary, and
Bridgeport were cut off very early in the
Mother Road’s
history, when the El Reno bypass took them off the route in 1933.
©
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America, updated September, 2011.
Book your
lodging in El Reno right
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