Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
In the summer, a handful of sand tossed on the blazing hot stainless-steel surface sent you flying at warp speed towards the ground. In winter, a handful of snow did the same thing. If you were smart, you didn’t “land” but started running in the air before you hit the ground.
For a couple of generations, the “Rocket Slide” was the main feature of Riverton’s City Park.
The iconic rocket shaped, three-story cone with the attached slide provided hours of fun, and a few concussions for kids in what amounts to Riverton’s version of “Central Park.”
City Park isn’t what it once was. The band shell is used occasionally and the skate park is a huge attraction for the present generation of skateboarders and BMX bikers, but the rest of the park is often a sinister place after dark. A place of violence and of homelessness that no one seems to have an answer for.
In its day the park was much more to the growing little railroad and ag town that was Riverton.
Riverton came to life on August 15, 1906, coinciding with the opening of a reclamation project on land purchased from the Shoshone Tribe the previous year in the McLaughlin Agreement.
As the Chicago North Western Railroad advanced from Shoshoni, across the Wind River at Wahaba it reached Riverton on its eventual terminus 25 miles further to the southwest in Lander.
Riverton in its infancy was a dry patch of sagebrush and cactus that had to be physically removed with rakes, shovels, and mule or horse-drawn equipment.
Riverton’s second mayor, E.H. Ryan, was elected in 1908, and one of his first projects was the establishment of a large park in what many thought would become the center of town.
In an April 29, 1909, meeting of the Riverton City Council, I.L. Burch of Lander offered a proposal for the location of a city park. Burch had 10 acres at the east end of Main Street and he asked $60 per acre under the condition that the land be only used for a park. It passed unanimously and the city wrote Burch a check for $600.
At the same meeting, the council approved the purchase of 1,000 eight- to 10-foot-tall trees from the L.L. May Company of St. Paul, Minnesota.
They may have been a bit overzealous in their actions since there was no irrigation water available for the young trees.
The 10-acre lot was still covered with sagebrush and cactus and a haven for rattlesnakes, prairie dogs and coyotes. But, it was a start.
At their next meeting, the Riverton City Council organized a contest for the “ladies” of the community to come up with a name for the new park. There were a few dozen entries, with the rather mundane name, “Fremont Park” being selected by the council. No one has ever referred to the park as “Fremont Park” after that announcement. It has remained simply, “City Park” for over a century.
The trees were planted with disappointing results, almost all of them died by the following year.
Riverton was a dry town, and the promised irrigation water from the Central Wyoming Irrigation Company failed to materialize.
City Park was enclosed by a five strand, four-foot-high barbed wire fence, not to keep vagrants out, but to keep cattle and sheep from roaming onto the property and grazing. Riverton pioneer John Delfelder still ran thousands of sheep on what is now the area of town south of Main Street to Monroe.
By 1914, the city had cleared the sagebrush and leveled the 10-acre park. In May 1918, Adolph Biederman, under contract with the city, began hauling and spreading 200 loads of decayed cow manure to enrich the soil.
An add from the May 8, 1914, edition of the Riverton Republican indicated the type of manure the city was looking for with a warning about excluding the kind they didn’t want.
“Notice to parties hauling manure; those having good clean manure, no tin cars or wire, can dump it in the city park. I will take 200 loads. Must be hauled within the next three days.”
In 1917, the city purchased leases for the 10-acre park from the Riverton Irrigation District and the park began to bloom.
Beginning in June 1917, boys and girls were motivated by America’s entrance into World War I to use the four acres on the west side of the park to plant vegetable gardens. The produce was donated to the war effort.
In January 1920, four wells were drilled inside the park to provide residential water. The four wells were each drilled 600 feet, but never produced the volume hoped for, and with much of the city at higher elevation to the west, it proved to be a forlorn project.
By 1921, City Park was a vibrant, green spot on the Yellowstone Highway. Yellow boulders, with arrows and the word “Yellowstone” dotted the west side of park along Federal Blvd. just as the markers had adorned the highway in Casper and Shoshoni, and in all the little towns in between.
Ball games began to be played with rival towns. Men’s League Baseball had teams from Thermopolis, Lander, Worland, Gebo, and even much smaller towns like Wolton, a ghost town today, coming to Riverton to play.
The baseball field was on the southwest corner of the park, across the street from Napa Auto Parts. Games were played in the early afternoon most of the time since there were no lights, and a late afternoon start had the center fielder, right fielder and first and second basemen blinded by the afternoon sun.
In one August 8, 1923, game reported in the Riverton Review, the locals outhit the team from Wolton 23-19 in a slugfest that was anything but a pitcher’s duel.
Other sports soon became the highlight of Saturday afternoon at City Park.
The Riverton Wolverines played the first football game in school history at the park, a 60-0 loss to Lander on Saturday, October 21, 1922.
Almost a year to the day, October 20, 1923, the Wolverines won their first high school football game 32-0 over those same Lander Tigers.
Riverton was dedicated to agriculture, an early oil and coal industry and ties from the High Country above Dubois for its early economic development.
Many residents realized that the growing number of tourists traveling from the east to Yellowstone represented another excellent revenue stream.
Attracting tourists, using the City Park as an oasis in the desert resulted in the construction of a Public Campground within the park in 1922. The campground featured electric lights, natural gas heat and hot and cold running water. It was a hit to travelers and Riverton began to be mentioned in travel guides all along the east coast.
Local tourists from surrounding towns enjoyed the park as well. On May 24, 1922, The Riverton Men’s Baseball team held off a late rally by the Shoshoni team to edge their neighbors 9-8.
In 1926, the city put a pair of concrete posts at the main entrance to City Park with nightlights attached to the top.
The increased lighting came in an effort to cut down on unsavory behavior after hours in the park. In the first instance of its kind, 17-year old Fred Warren of Riverton died in the park from an alcohol overdose. Though Prohibition was in full enforcement, Shoshoni, Moneta and spots in the Wind River Canyon were havens for moonshiners.
The October 22, 1925, edition of the Riverton Review described the fate of Warren.
“The pathetic death of Fred Warren, a young man yet in his teens, should serve as a stern warning to those who are inclined to drink the so-called liquor that is being illicitly peddled nowadays, not only in Riverton, but in other communities. You Warre, whose home was in the east, was found in a comatose state at the City Park with a partly drained bottle of moonshine lying by his side. He was removed to a local hospital where he died early Wednesday morning. Pneumonia, caused by his exposure, had hastened death. Examination disclosed that the young man’s stupor was caused by poisoned moonshine. Tests showed the remains of the bottle which caused Fred Warren’s death were a deadly concoction of the rankest kinds of poison. And they were sold or given to this young man who probably wanted a “thrill,” and paid dearly for it.
Fred Warren’s sealed lips cannot disclose the identity of the murderous bootlegger who made or sold the liquor, but decent people will pronounce a murrain upon the murderous head of the guilty person.
Let Fred Warren’s untimely death serve as a solemn warning to those who crave a nip of the forbidden fluid.”
The park continued to evolve. Service stations were built strategically at the western corners of the park to catch the tourist traffic.
In 1937, football games ended at City Park with the creation of Tonkin Stadium to the north side of the recently constructed Riverton High School.
Men’s league baseball faded during World War II, but in the aftermath, the rise of youth sports found other uses for City Park.
A Little League Baseball field was constructed in the southeast corner of the park. Over the years it became the field for the Majors, while Hilltop, on the west side of the former Wilfred Mower Track was the location for the Minors and Teeter Park, on North Broadway was the starting point for Riverton baseball with a T-ball field.
Several Little League State Tournaments were held at the Major Field during the 1950s and 60s.
A one-term mayor, serving just one year from 1954 to 1955 learned the hard way what City Park meant to the people of Riverton.
Esco H. Steffy proposed that Main Street be extended through the center of the park to connect with the other end of Main Street east of the park. He quickly drew the ire of many leading women of Riverton who publicly proclaimed they would chain themselves to the trees in the park before any road was built through it.
Steffy lost his reelection bid and the park remains safe from roads to this day.
Horseshoe pits align the southwest corner of the park and are little used today, but were once the site for many tournaments, and a few state championship tournaments in the 1960s.
The crowning achievement for the park came in the 1950s with the creation of the Riverton Swimming Pool. Two generations of children learned to swim at the pool, enjoyed diving, splashing and swimming throughout the summer months, and the pool was the location for regional qualifying swimming since Riverton High School’s original pool on the top of Main Street was too short for regulation meets.
The municipal pool was marked with 25-meter lanes and was a competition-quality facility.
In 1963, a year after John Glenn captured the imagination of children across the United States, City Park joined a national craze of constructing playground equipment that resembled the rockets and spaceships used by NASA and often seen in science fiction films.
Miracle Playground Equipment became the national supplier of these space themed swing sets, slides and merry-go-rounds and they were put up everywhere by the tens of thousands nationwide.
The “Rocket” went up in City Park and was the focal point for children for the next 20 years.
Its towering nosecone shape frightened more timid types, but many fights took place inside the upper level, the nose, of the slide as boys battled to play “King of the Hill” on it.
A fast, some would say brutal, merry-go-round sat nearby on greased axles. It often reached speeds that threw the most intrepid rider off into the grass.
In 1973, these joys of childhood took a major hit when the United States Congress established the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The commission began tracking playground injuries through public hospital emergency rooms across the county. It spelled doom for high, fast, action-packed playground equipment.
The commission’s work led to the publication of the first Handbook for Public Playground Safety in 1981. A lawsuit over an injury by a child playing on the Rocket led to its removal and the merry-go-round as well.
The modern playground equipment in the park is all smooth plastic, much lower to the ground and the surrounding play area is filled with cushioned rubber material.
The city abandoned the pool in the early 1990s, reaching an agreement with Fremont County School District 25 to share the expense of an indoor pool at Riverton High School. After just a couple of years, the city reneged on the agreement, leaving all the expense of a public pool to the school district.
The pool was filled in and kids began skating and riding their BMX bikes over makeshift jumps. It was harmless fun, but people started complaining about the “noise.”
The City Council met with the kids and told them if they built safe, viable jumps, they’d be allowed to skate in the park. The kids complied. With the help of their fathers, they built solid wooden jumps. The city didn’t meet their end of the agreement. They fenced the area, padlocked the gates and refused to allow the kids to use the equipment they had made.
Thankfully, wiser, more youth-oriented heads prevailed and a few years later, the present, permanent concrete jumps were constructed on the west side of the park.
A splash pad came at the same time as the skate park, but continued technical issues haven’t allowed it to be used very much.
From a barren, sagebrush patch filled with rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, badgers and coyotes to the central meeting location for summer outdoor recreation today, the Riverton City Park remains an icon of the city.