Riveside 100 Years— Page 5
Looking back at Riverside through the years
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Riverside’s Main Street, with DeTro’s figuring prominently, in 1966. George Ladd/Okanogan County Historical Society
The Okanogan County Fair in 1913, in Riverside. The Carpenter ranch was across the river on the extreme right. The Okanogan River spills over its banks during the 1972 flood. The Riverside bridge shows at far right.
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The Riverside Grocery in 1976. The building still houses the store.
Business from 4 Riverside “was a very friendly town,” DeTro said. “I was from the city, from Toronto. Everybody wanted to invite me to a party or to join this club.” In 1994, Mike Lavezzo took over ownership from his brother and has operated the store ever since. “I was a cowboy, and I fit into it,” Mike Lavezzo said. He and his brother opted to keep the DeTro’s name. “You could change the name after 40 years, but people are still going to call it DeTro’s so we aren’t going to mess with that,” Lavezzo said. “The DeTro family did such a great job with the store for 40 years, the store is known really from hours away from here. I’ve
been with people a long ways from here who know about this store.” Since taking ownership, Lavezzo has updated and tripled the inventory at the store, which takes up 5,500 square feet of a 10,000-square foot building. There’s a separate leather shop in back, and the store’s employees clean and shape Western hats, hem jeans for men and women, oil saddles and more. “There’s a lot we do here that’s all geared toward taking care of the Western people that are a majority of this county,” Lavezzo said. “That’s what’s kept us alive.” He said working in a small town like Riverside has been “rewarding and humbling.” “Riverside’s a great town, a small town, so everybody knows everybody. I like the location of it,”
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he said. Although he’s 63 now, Lavezzo has no plans to close up shop. “We’re thankful that the people of Okanogan County have supported us all these years and we hope that they will continue. We hope that we can still provide what they need,” he said. Two additional businesses have been going strong since 1990 – Dave’s Gun and Pawn, 112 N. Main St., and Margie’s RV Park and Pottery, 202 Kendall St. “Riverside’s a nice town to grow up in. It’s just homey,” Gun and Pawn owner Kim Anderson said. Her late stepfather, Dave Schwilke, opened the shop in 1990 and they sell “a little bit of everything,” Anderson said. “Guns and reloading supplies, hunting supplies, some tools, some saddles
once in a while.” She said she appreciates the “small town attitudes. The customers are all nice. We get customers from all over though, not just here.” The same holds for the RV park, which is tucked in a quiet spot off U.S. Highway 97. “You get to meet so many different people, from all over the world. That’s probably the interesting part,” owner Margie Mefford said. In her time running the park, which she opened the week of the 1990 Omak Stampede, she has met campers from Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Tasmania, Thailand, Australia and other farflung places. Some live in their RVs yearround on the 2.5 acres there, and
the site has even played host to five weddings, Mefford said. She keeps pottery on display, a side gig that is “more of just a hobby,” she said. A tavern, the Riverside Bar and Grill, still stands in an Old Weststyle building even though it closed a while ago. “It’s opened and closed over the years,” said Mefford, also the town’s mayor. The last owner, originally from Soap Lake, closed the tavern and returned to his hometown when he developed health problems, Mefford said. She couldn’t remember exactly when the tavern closed. High school students built the tavern as a project, according to resident Kate McPherson, whose late husband grew up in the area.