El Reno Road Trip - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

Fun Facts About El Reno »

• El Reno was established in 1889 and was named for General Jesse L. Reno, who was killed in the battle of South Mountain, September 14, 1862. The “EL” was prefixed to differentiate it from the Post Offices at Reno City and Fort Reno. El Reno won the county seat in an election held in 1890.
• Where’s Waldo? In 1902 Anheuser Busch built a two-story red brick building in the downtown district. This building had a saloon on the main floor and gambling on the second floor. At that time, the building across the alley was composed of the same establishments. There is an unpainted former opening in the wall on the second floor in the alleyway side of the building, where there was a board or bridge between the two buildings. Patrons would use the boards to go back and forth between the buildings. These boards served well as an escape route from one saloon/gambling room to another when the law came to pay a visit. Mr. Waldo put a name plate on the building when he purchased it in the 1930s.
• Famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart flew her autogiro (forerunner of the helicopter) at the Fort Reno airstrip in 1920s.
• El Reno has received the prestigious designation as a “Great American Main Street” community.
• El Reno’s Post Office was established June 28, 1889. The mail was kept in a shoe box in a tent on the corner of Evans and Rogers Streets. The people would drop in and help themselves to their own mail. The “new” post office was built in 1916 and the building designer was a woman. The fully restored building is now used as a Special Events Center called Festivities at the Old Post Office.
• Black Jack, the spirited rider less ceremonial horse used in the funeral processions of Presidents Hoover, Kennedy, and Johnson, and General MacArthur was raised and trained at Fort Reno.
• The El Reno Airport was opened in 1943 as a United States Army Air Forces World War II primary pilot training airfield by the Army Air Forces Training Command Gulf Coast Training Center (later Central Flying Training Command). It was known as El Reno Field. Pilot training at the airfield apparently ended during the summer of 1944, with the reduced demand for new pilots. The airfield was then turned over to the local government at the end of the war.