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Posts tagged ‘Edmond’

Edmond History Museum

I love history museums, I love learning about the past of an area and seeing how that area has developed over time. The Edmond History Museum is a great place to learn about the early days of Edmond Oklahoma. This is a wonderful place to spend an hour, there are exhibits that change regularly as well as permanent displays.

Sitting next to historic Stephenson Park on south Boulevard, the sandstone building which was built as an armory houses a small library for research along with a large exhibit space. Here you can learn about the history of Edmond. Originally a coal and watering stop along the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, mile marker 103 became Summit but was officially named Edmond in 1887. The town grew on April 22, 1889, when about 150 decided to make it their home after the land run.

Several displays show the growth of Edmond over the years. Edmond became home to the Territorial Normal School in 1891, this helped grow the population of the small town. There are also plenty of artifacts for Route 66 lovers as well. Route 66 came right through town, coming in from the east on Second Street then turning south at Broadway heading to Oklahoma City. The small reproduction of Bradbury Station, which sat at the northwest corner of Route 66 and US 77, has many pictures of historic Route 66 buildings located in Edmond. The museum also has plenty of places for children to learn about the early days of living in Oklahoma, including a reproduction of a farmhouse.

The building it’s housed in is historical as well, the Edmond Armory was built in 1936-37 on the southeast corner of Stepheson Park by the WPA (Works Progress Administration). It was home to the Headquarters Company of the 179th Infantry Unit of the 45th Infantry Division and consisted of 65 men. It was in this building that troops trained to go war in Europe during World War II. The building was used consistently by the Edmond unit of the Oklahoma National Guard until 1968 and was turned over to the city of Edmond in 1972. The historical museum didn’t occupy the space until 1983, when community members collected enough artifacts from Edmond’s past to be displayed. The armory was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Address: 431 S. Boulevard, Edmond.

Category:

Edmond Oklahoma, National Register of Historic Places, Oklahoma, Oklahoma history, Route 66

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Food Friday: The Fried Taco

If you haven’t been to the Edmond Icehouse Project, you are missing out on some good food. Not only is Woodward Pizza located in this complex but so is The Fried Taco. This small taco restaurant started as a food truck in 2019 and expanded into The collective not long after. In 2022, they opened their second location in the metro area in the newly developed Icehouse Project just north of Edmond Road (or 2nd Street) and west of the railroad tracks.

The menu is small and straightforward, you have different fried tacos plus a limited selection of quesadillas and empanadas. We started our visit with the white queso with chorizo. This isn’t just chips and queso, the chips are fried flour tortillas and the queso is a creamy blend of cheeses with onion, tomato, and chorizo mixed in. I love these chips, they have a different texture than corn chips and in this case the thicker chip is good. This last visit I tried their chicken bacon ranch taco and a ground beef and cheese empanada. The flour tortilla has been fried and shaped to hold ingredients just like a taco. The chicken mixed with ranch and bacon gave the taco a great taste that you just don’t always get from regular tacos. The crunchy tortilla also lends to the different flavor. I’ve had the brisket and the pork tacos in the past and they are good as well. I really think that fried flour tortilla just makes these tacos good. This last trip was the first time I had ever tried an empanada. It’s like a fried pie with savory ingredients such as beef or pork. I got a beef empanada, I love the flaky crust on the outside. The beef and cheese mixture inside was also good, very flavorful. To wash it all down I got a homemade coconut lavender lemonade. This is so refreshing, the coconut and lavender give the lemonade a smooth taste.

Overall I love the food and the atmosphere at The Fried Taco, you can eat inside in a purple room or take your food outside to sit on the patio. There is a play place for kids and plenty of games around for everyone. I have not been to their location in the Collective yet but would like to visit soon. I give them 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 119 W 2nd St. Suite 150, Edmond; 308 NW 10th (The Collective Food Hall), Oklahoma City.

Category:

Edmond Oklahoma, Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food

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Food Friday: 405 Pizza

I love trying new local pizza places. 405 Pizza has been in west Edmond for a couple years and over the summer I had a chance to try it. Since then, we’ve been back a couple times. They are just a simple small pizza restaurant.

To start, we have their garlic cheese bread. This is just a cheesy goodness. I like when there is more cheese than crust and this cheese bread is perfect. Next up is their pizza, we’ve had a couple different kinds and they have all been great. A nice light flavor to the crust and plenty of cheese and toppings. We also tried a calzone on our last visit, that was also good. Stuffed so full that it got messy (and messy is always good with food).

The customer service has always been good and the restaurant clean. We have also gotten takeout, which went well. I give them 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 815 E Main St., Yukon.

Category:

Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food

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Food Friday: Woodward Pizza

Detroit style pizza is somewhat new to Oklahoma but is taking off quickly. One of the newest places to offer this style of pizza is Woodward Pizza at the Icehouse Project in Edmond.

We visited on a quiet Saturday morning right before the lunch crowd showed up. We started with spicy cheese curds. These deep-fried cheese curds have plenty of heat with them, they do come with ranch to put the fire out. If you have someone with you who might not like spicy, this definitely isn’t for them. As for the pizza, we ordered the trippple XXXtra pepperoni. This pizza is really good. Nice flavor to the deep-dish crust. The cheese and pepperoni were piled high with crispy cheese burnt around the edge. The red sauce goes on last and it was good (to tell the truth I’m not a red sauce fan). Now for a brief history of Detroit style pizza, it was of course developed in Detroit. The square shape comes from using automotive drip pans to bake the pizza. It’s been a thing in Detroit for many years but only recently has spread through the country.

I really enjoyed our first visit to Woodward Pizza and ready to go back. The service was great as well, the employees very friendly. They told me that the menu will most likely grow in the future. This is part of the new Icehouse Project, there will be more restaurants in this space. I’m giving them 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 119 W 2nd St. Suite 100, Edmond.

Category:

Edmond Oklahoma, Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food

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The Edmond Right-Of-Way Graves

Bre's mid Oct 2015 018

So everyone knows that the intersection of Broadway and 33rd Street in Edmond is bad.  Poor design, too much traffic, and lights that never seem to change.  I hate that intersection and try to avoid it at all costs but when I do get stuck there, I wonder if the traffic troubles in the area are a ghostly legacy of the two men buried near there.  What?  What do you mean?  There isn’t a cemetery near there, can’t be any graves.  Well that is where you are wrong, they aren’t easy to get to but yes, there are two graves just northwest of the intersection along the railroad tracks.

Let’s go back to 1886, surveyors for the Southern Kansas Railway (later part of the Santa Fe Railway) picked a location at mile marker 103 (it means one hundred and three miles south of Arkansas City, Kansas) for a coaling station on the rail line.  A few months later in September the crews came through to “scrape” the land and prepare the grade for the rail line to be laid.  On September 17th, two members of this crew, Frank Mosier and Willie Davis were killed in a fight and then buried along the rail line just a few miles south of marker 103.  What was the fight about?  Did they kill each other?  Was there really a fight?  Did they die of something else, disease or heat exhaustion maybe?  Many historians have tried to uncover the truth but what really happened to these two men is lost in time.  All we really know is that the two men were buried along the railroad right of way, side by side.

For many years the railroad tended to the graves.  There were two markers for the men, Willie Davis has a small iron cross and Frank Mosier had a stone with his name carved into it.  But as time went on, the graves had become overgrown with weeds and grass.  There have been some people who tried to take care of the graves but with the development of Edmond it was hard to keep the location clean.  At some point vandals broke Mosier’s stone and scattered the pieces in the field.  Some Edmond residents put up a wooden cross and someone has put gravel over the graves.  In 1979 the Oklahoma Historical Society put a granite marker at the site and embedded Mosier’s stone into it.  The Santa Fe railway still owns the site but has not done a good job tending to it.

This is not an easy place to find.  There is really no way to the graves.  You can try to park along the businesses that backup to the rail line but there is a very big ditch to get through in order to get to the tracks.  The other option is the one I took, park at the business on 33rd Street, then walk the rails around the curve to the site.  I will warn you- this is not safe and possibly illegal.  It is a blind curve and if you aren’t paying attention the train can come around very quickly.  I went to the site on a slow rail traffic afternoon, so I was lucky but it was still scary and any little noise sent me down the rail grade to the ditch.  I’m also not going to say the site is haunted, but I just wanted to get out of there, felt very uncomfortable.

So every time you are around the intersection of Broadway and 33rd Street in Edmond, look to the northwest at the railroad track and think about the two men who lost their lives and now reside permanently in that location.  Maybe they are “controlling” the traffic flow at that intersection.

Bre's mid Oct 2015 014

The grave marker of Willie Davis, Edmond, Ok, 2015.

Bre's mid Oct 2015 021

The granite marker with Frank Mosier’s headstone embedded next to the grave site, Edmond, OK, 2015.

Category:

Edmond Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma history

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Food Friday: Zarate’s Latin Mexican Grill

Late Aug 2015 545

Edmond, Oklahoma is not my most favorite place in the world- it’s too spread out, some of the people can be rude, and the traffic sucks.  But my wonderful husband works there so if I want to visit him for lunch, I have to go to Edmond.  I don’t like eating at the major chain restaurants much, so he takes me to different places.  And one of those places he introduced me to is Zarate’s Latin Mexican Grill on Broadway.

Now this isn’t the same tex-mex that you get here in Oklahoma, this is a more South American twist on what we know as mexican food.  They have the typical enchiladas, tacos and chimichangas but with a different taste than what I’ve had at other restaurants.  My personal favorite is the fajita beef chimichanga with sour cream sauce.  The beef is spiced differently than what I’ve had before and the sour cream sauce is just wonderful, has more of a sour cream tartness to it than others I’ve tasted.  I’ve also tried the enchiladas and quesadillas, the spinach quesadilla is my second favorite item on the menu.  Of course it all comes with beans and rice.  I will admit, I’ve never had the beans.  Because of the food abuse inflicted on me when I was younger by my mother, I can’t stand the smell, sight or taste of beans.  So I order double rice instead, it’s also really good- not too sticky with corn and peppers.

My husband has been the more adventurous one, he’s had the Papa Rellenas, ground beef wrapped in mashed potatoes then fried, his personal favorite.  He’s also tried the Empanadas and so many of the other offerings that he couldn’t remember them all.  This is also where they make the only guacamole in town that he will eat.  He loves it and even introduced it to his parents- I hear my father-in-law loved it.  Of course you get the normal chips, queso, and salsa with your meal.  As good as the entrees are the chips are the best.  Wish I could find them this good for at home.  I really could eat these chips all day and not feel bad.  The salsa was ok and the queso could be improved, needs to have more of the South American spices added.  But seriously the chips are killer.

Opened in 2007 by Jorge Zarate, who is a native of Peru, he brings a mix of Brazilian, Jamaican, Peruvian, Cuban, Mexican and Tex-Mex to Edmond in a small but colorful building.  You can often see Mr. Zarate himself seating guests, taking orders or serving food.  The wait staff has always been friendly and helpful, service has always been good- no complaints.  I give it my personal ranking of 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 706 S. Broadway, Edmond, OK  (east side of the road)

Late Aug 2015 542

Category:

Food, Oklahoma

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