Page 6 — Riverside 100 Years
The Chronicle — December 11, 2013
Longtime city residents reminisce By Garrett Rudolph The Chronicle RIVERSIDE — As the town approaches its centennial celebration, local residents reminisce about the often colorful past that brought Riverside to where it is today. In many ways, the town hasn’t changed much over those decades, said Bob Sutton, who’s lived in Riverside for nearly 86 years. He was the son of Dick Sutton, who was one of the town’s original pioneers. “It was a good place to raise hell, and I done lots of that,” Sutton said of the old days. He remembers people — other people, he said — would tip over outhouses as a Halloween prank — including one time knocking over a toilet as a startled man sat inside. He remembers skinny dipping in the old concrete cistern tank at the cemetery, which was fed with water from a windmill. The old bridge that ran through town and crossed the Okanogan River was a source of summer recreation. Sutton and longtime Riverside resident George Frank both said they’d jumped off the main deck level into the river before, but had never ventured higher up the structure. “I’ve seen it happen, but I’ve never done it before,” Sutton said. Another popular prank included moving the gravestone marker of Frank Watkins, a horse thief who was famously shot and killed by an unknown gunman in 1904. The bullet holes still remain at the location of the shooting, at
“ I think about where I’d like to live and I keep coming back to Riverside. Mayor Margie Mefford
” what is now the Riverside Grocery, 102 N. Main St., town Clerk Sharma Dickinson said. While some things have remained the same, Frank said the town has changed a lot over the years. At one point, Riverside was known as one of the prettiest towns around, he said. “The town was something to be proud of,” he said. The old-timers shake their head at the shape the town’s in now, he said. “The people themselves have to take the pride,” he said. Still, Riverside remains a nice place to live, former Mayor Gene Layton said. “Every time I go somewhere to visit, I think about where I’d like to live and I keep coming back to Riverside,” Mayor Margie Mefford said. She described the town as “quaint” and “charming.” One recent change with the
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Riverside’s current bridge, in 1969. The old bridge had different levels from which town daredevils jumped. town was the city adding a granite columbarium to the cemetery. Mefford said there’s only one other one like it in the county. “It’s really nice looking,” she said. It was installed in the middle of November. Mefford said the city has been looking at building a new sewer plant and adding new water meters, but those plans have been
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Tree-lined Riverside on April 20, 1961. The school, which later became a gold-panning concern, stands on the hill overlooking town.
put on hold due to a lack of funding. The city also abandoned its annual RiverFest celebration over the summer. “It’s been an off-and on thing for probably 30 years,” Mefford said. “It just got where nobody wanted to handle it.” Mefford said she hopes somebody will eventually resurrect the festival, but it “would have to be some younger people.” Many local residents may say the town hasn’t changed a great deal, but at one time it wasn’t quite so tiny. Prior to being incorporated, Riverside hosted the first Okanogan County Fair in 1905. In the years that followed, the town featured a hospital, a school and even a zoo that kept coyotes, rattlesnakes and a lion. During Prohibition, the town had its share of bootlegging stories. Frank remembers that as a child, he hauled in firewood for Mrs. Cooper, whose husband owned the Cooper Hotel. Each day, she would give him one piece of candy for his troubles. The high school’s last graduating class was in the 1950s, but the primary school remained open until the 1970s. Mefford, who moved to town in
1976, said a lot of people at that time were sad about the school closing. “They never could get the quality of teachers they needed,” she said. The bell from the school now resides in the park. Sutton said that bell has been stolen a few times over the years. He said he was never involved in any of the thievery, but as a youngster, he would sneak into the bell tower, grab hold of the rope and ring the bell more than a few times when he wasn’t supposed to. The town had been a major hub of Okanogan County in those early years, shortly after incorporation on Dec. 22, 1913. One major event stalled the growth of the town. The railway came through in 1914, negating the town’s importance of being at the head of the Okanogan River for riverboat travel, such as the North Star ferry, which ran from Wenatchee to Riverside until 1915. Tragedy would consume much of the original layout of the town. During a one-week stretch in 1916, three-quarters of the town was destroyed by a pair of fires — the first of which was said to have been started by a business owner who wanted to claim the insurance money on his property.