June 2025

Aiden Williams loves to play baseball, so much so, that he pitched in last week’s Oklahoma State Games despite recovering from a serious thumb injury.

“I feel like if I took the whole summer off, then that’s just wasted opportunity to get better and get stronger. I’m using this time right now to get bigger and stronger to get back to where I was before I got injured,” said Williams.

The Union City High School senior was one of three local players on the Northwest roster, which lost to the Southeast team 5-4 on a walk-off in the seventh inning.

The City of Oklahoma City hosted the Champions Parade to celebrate the Thunder’s first NBA Championship in franchise history.

Hundreds of thousands of fans lined the parade route and Thunder players regularly walked the parade route to high-five and celebrate with fans.

Janice Kay Plumley was born Dec. 8, 1947.

She passed away peacefully June 19, 2025, in El Reno, surrounded by the people she loved. 

Janice was the daughter of Raymond Ruskin Stovall and June Evelyn (Banta) Stovall. She was a graduate of Minco High School. She married and soon became a young mother to three sons.

Later she returned to her studies, becoming a certified paralegal, and proudly spent many years working with some of Oklahoma’s most respected attorneys and law firms.

Fireworks could be heard in the skies over El Reno just moments after the Oklahoma City Thunder won the state’s first-ever major league sports championship with a 103-91 victory over the Indiana Pacers.

The 12-point win in Game 7 of the 2025 National Basketball Association Finals gave the Thunder the 4-3 series decision and the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time in the franchise’s 17-year history in the state.

Surfing the wave of excitement with the Oklahoma City Thunder being in the NBA Finals, the city of El Reno’s Fast Connect fiber optic network passed a major field test last week.

Literally.

In the grass field east of the main pavilion at Lake El Reno, the city hosted a free watch party.

More than 125 residents brought blankets, lawn chairs and umbrellas to watch Game 6 of the NBA Finals on a big screen television measuring 12 feet wide and 7 feet tall. The Internet used for the live feed was provided by the city’s fiber optic system.

The centennial of the Mother Road is coming in 2026. 

Although it was not completely paved until the late 1930s, the stretch of what was originally designated as U.S. Highway No. 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles, would enter Canadian County at County Line Road on the east and into Caddo County on the west side of the county.

The 2,448 miles of the original U.S. Highway 66 included 400 miles that would become Oklahoma State Highway 66, as it is officially named today.

The historic Route 66 highway crosses Canadian County. 

In a beeline, the first highway from Chicago to Los Angeles would change the early development of Yukon and El Reno.

Established Nov. 11, 1926, the highway would bypass Calumet and Geary by 1935 as a shorter section of Portland cement was built between El Reno and Bridgeport.

One of the historians of the Mother Road, Michael Wallis of Tulsa, was one of the first nationally known authors to spur interest in the highway.

Children involved in Project Transformation took a field trip last week to the El Reno Regional Airport. Airport Manager Scott Law took the group on a tour of buildings and offices at the airport. 

The first- through fifth-graders learned El Reno’s history of how the airport was originally built as Mustang Field, as well as its role in World War II and other aspects of aviation history. 

The group saw the hangar where helicopters are repaired and a few of the planes from Tony Caldwell’s collection.

Canadian County sheriff’s investigator Preston Hodge earned the U.S. Attorney Award for Community Impact, signed by Acting U.S. Attorney John E. Childress. Hodge was recently honored by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

Hodge was recognized for his role in a large-scale federal narcotics investigation that began with a routine traffic stop and ultimately led to a million-dollar drug seizure, multiple arrests and federal prosecution.

OKLAHOMA CITY – A federal jury has convicted Ronnie Allen Barton, 48, of Canadian County, of two counts of attempted coercion and enticement of a minor, one count of commission of a sex offense by a registered sex offender and one count of attempted receipt of child pornography, said U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester.

On Feb. 20, 2025, a federal grand jury returned a four-count indictment against Barton, charging him with the above crimes. On June 17, 2025, a federal jury found Barton guilty on all counts.