News

Organizers said last week’s El Reno Blessing Baskets Festival of the Trees, Christmas in July was “the best ever.”

The eighth year for the event helped raise more than $60,000 for the local organization, said Donna Dyer, Blessing Baskets Director of Community Relations.

“Our community is awesome, we raised over $60,000, everyone had fun for an awesome cause,” said Dyer.

The evening boasted approximately 80 silent auction items. Former El Reno Mayor Matt White provided auctioneer services, helping to move more than 40 live auction items.

The Oklahoma Indian Nation Pow-Wow will run Aug. 4-6 at Concho and organizer David Bearshield said the state’s oldest pow-wow is expected to draw thousands of participants and spectators.

This will be the 33rd year for the Indian Nation pow-wow.

The event will open Friday at 8 a.m. with a Language Day Camp at the RESPECT Gym at Concho.

ARCADIA — Singer-songwriters Rachel Lynch and Griffin Wade will present an Elm Tree concert at 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 6 at the Arcadia Round Barn.

The couple were married in March and live in Oklahoma City. She is from El Reno and he hails from San Marcos, Texas.

The Elm Tree Concert Series presents professional musicians performing beneath the shade of the giant elm tree on the north side of the Round Barn.

One more hurdle in the process was cleared when Canadian County commissioners approved a resolution for “intersection modifications” at Banner Road and State Highway 66.

The project agreement is between Canadian County District 1 and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.

The estimated $400,000 project is on ODOT’s September bid letting schedule.

The resolution outlines ODOT’s engineering, land acquisition and construction responsibilities.

The intersection will become a permanent four-way stop, District 1 Commissioner Tom Manske said.

LAWSUITS

Discover Bank vs. Robert Velia for $10,421.10 to pay a debt plus interest, costs and attorney fees.

Freedom Mortgage Corporation vs. Jeffery Everett for $199,314.71 to pay a debt plus interest, costs and attorney fees and foreclosure of mortgage on Lot 4, Block 7, Westport West Addition, Yukon.

U.S. Bank N.A. vs. Christopher Ulery for $112,303.71 to pay a debt plus interest, costs and attorney fees and foreclosure of mortgage on Lot 6, Block 1, Canadian Estates Addition, Mustang.

Actors and a filming crew from Boiling Point Media, based out of Oklahoma City, were back in El Reno last week to shoot scenes for the third installment of the Jurassic Pet series.

The movie, according to Boiling Point’s Chris Hoyt, is titled The Adventures of Jurassic Pet 3: Return to the Wild. It’s the second time parts of the city have been used as backdrops for the series.

Filming will return to locations in El Reno in early August.

Hoyt said the crew and actors are non-union and not affected by the current strikes in Hollywood by actors and screenwriters.

Truth matters.

The story of what really happened on Nov. 29, 1864, at the Sand Creek Massacre site in Eads, Colo., is being told through an exhibition titled “The Sand Creek Massacre: The Betrayal That Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever.”

The exhibition first opened in November 2022 at the History Colorado Center in Denver, Colo., telling the history of the Sand Creek Massacre from the perspectives of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, drawn from oral histories that have been passed down for generations.

In a booming eastern Canadian County, families are a driving force of development.

Families move in for the schools, for the houses and for the communities, said Carol Hefner, the spokeswoman for a development that has landed a future amphitheater that will bring family entertainment to the area.

Students from Yukon’s St. John Nepomuk Catholic School helped out at The Lord’s Harvest last week in what founder and director Nikki Pruitt called a “wonderful blessing.”

The Lord’s Harvest is an El Reno food ministry founded and operated by Pruitt, her family members and community volunteers.

The St. John’s students helped stock shelves, unload trucks and scrubbed pallets used to stack food items.

Organizers asked that only the first name and initial be used to identify the students.

Canadian County commissioners heard suggestions about how to proceed with a possible rehabilitation of the historic county jail.

Constructed more than 100 years ago, the county-owned building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The old jail is at the corner of Rogers and Evans next to the renovated stables near the Canadian County Courthouse and Administration Offices.

The long-vacant building sorely needs a new roof and windows.