Chapel opens for tours during wine festival today in El Reno, OK
Redlands Community College in El Reno is hosting its second annual wine festival, and this year they're opening up the Chapel Creek Winery chapel for the first time in more than 50 years.
EL RENO — Andrew Snyder sees the past and the future when he looks at the chapel next to his vineyard.
He sees the original stained glass and Spanish architecture. He also sees the future home of a convention center and the hub of Oklahoma viticulture.
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"Nobody walks by that chapel and doesn't absolutely fall in love with it," said Snyder, a professor at Redlands Community College who teaches future Oklahoma winemakers.
Starting today, the public will be able to take a look inside the historic building for the first time in more than 50 years.
Hourly chapel tours will be a part of the second annual Grape Stomp Festival. The festival will be from noon to 7 p.m. today and Sunday at Chapel Creek Winery, 5005 Darlington Road in El Reno. The festival will include music, food, wine tasting and grape stomping.
"If you want to roll up your (pant) legs and get your toes all purple, you'll be able to do that," Snyder said.
The corner stone was laid Sept. 12, 1913, so the second day of the festival is the anniversary of the chapel's construction.
The Chapel Creek Winery chapel has lived many lives before it became the namesake of a winery. It was built by the Order of the Easter Star, the female counterparts to the Masons. It was a state-run drug rehabilitation center and then a quail hatchery. But for several decades, it was simply closed and unused.
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