Riverside Grocery

Riverside Grocery was located on the west side of the road, on the Oregon Side of the Snake River Bridge headed south.

In the community that lived up on the hill and could not get into town. December 21, 1972, due to the dam being built in the river, it started freezing and froze from the dam upriver for 35 miles. We moved out and at that time, the ice and water was around our place, and we were completely surrounded by it. Lester always said he wanted to live on an island, and when he got me on one, I moved him out. The buildings are all upon a little knoll, and the water didn’t get into the house, but over around the stores it did.

At that time, the grocery stores were Mack’s Market and the Riverside Grocery. Mack’s Market was owned by Jerry Rollins and his wife. The Riverside Grocery was owned by Ken Rhodes and his wife, and they sandbagged around. They did have to move a lot of their produce out and were closed for quite some time due to the ice and high water. A year and a month later, on January 21, 1974, it froze but not as much. Of course, on both of these floods we were really lucky in that it started thawing down by the dam and let the water loose instead of starting to thaw up near Ontario and bringing the water down on the ice that we already had.

From Conner-LeVander Family History.