RM of Reno’s story
The Rural Municipality of Reno No. 51 was incorporated on December 11, 1911. It sits in the far southwest corner of Saskatchewan, with the Montana border to the south and Alberta to the west.
How it got its name isn't certain. Reno, Nevada and Reno County, Kansas are both named for Jesse Lee Reno, a Union general in the American Civil War, but there is no record that the Saskatchewan RM took its name from him. Another explanation is that RENO is an acronym drawn from four rural post offices in the area: Russthorn, near Robsart; Eden Valley, southwest of Cypress Lake; Nashlyn, south of Consul; and Oxarat, west of Cypress Lake. Nashlyn lay outside the RM's boundary at the time, but acronym names like this turn up elsewhere on the prairies.
Over the years several of the RM's communities have passed from village status: Vidora dissolved as a village in 1952, Govenlock in 1976, Senate in 1994 and Robsart in 2002. Consul remains a village within the RM, and the RM office is there. Today the area is known for its native grasslands, which form the Govenlock-Nashlyn-Battle Creek Grasslands Important Bird Area, and for sites such as the Red Coat Trail, Robsart Art Works, the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area, and Cypress Lake Recreation Site.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Rural Municipality of Reno No. 51” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.
