Postcards

A slight breeze drifted by with the sweet smell of fall riding on its back. The rails seemed to glow as the afternoon sun hit them. The wooden boardwalk surrounding the depot was spotted with people, some waiting patiently for the train to deliver family and friends; others waiting for the freight a small farming community needs to survive.

If you stood real still, you could hear the whistle as the train crossed the Beaver River Bridge and make out the plume of iron gray smoke as the steam engine labored up the slight grade outside of town.

Today, we are going to stay right here in Oklahoma. As we continue our visits, it will become clear that I am fascinated with airports, bus stations, truck stops and train stations. In this column, I’m sharing a couple of postcards with pictures of El Reno, Oklahoma.

The first picture shows the Rock Island train depot in El Reno. Like a lot of Oklahoma towns, El Reno was born in the land runs of the late 1800s. The interesting thing about El Reno is that the town was actually born from two different land runs. The land run of 1889 opened up all lands