GenGateway

It is idle to speculate on the appearance of the country now comprising Riverside, or on the character of its inhabitants, a hundred years ago. Doubtless the children of the forest, whose descendants were found lure when the present lords of the soil look possession, held peaceable and undisputed ownership. They ale and drank — they loved and hated — they lived and died as their forefathers had done, little dreaming, perhaps, that the day was drawing nigh when the parched plains and sterile soil, that refused to yield its products to their primitive system of cultivation, was soon to burst forth into beauty and magnificence unequalled in any other part of the world.

When Columbus crossed the ocean four hundred years ago and a new continent lay at his feet, who can tell what scenes were being enacted here?. Or when the great bell of Congress Hall rang out the notes of liberty, proclaiming the birth of a nation, who knows whether there was peace or war, prosperity or want, where we now make our homes and where the sound of the church bell and the scream of the locomotive have silenced forever the war whoop of the Indian and the roar of the wild beast?

All the past is dark as night, and we search in vain for tongue or pen to cast even a tinge of sunshine upon the history of Riverside up to the year 1838 — only fifty-five years ago.