Peggy H. brought me a wonderful item of Ridgeway’s history: the Ridgeway Centennial special edition supplement of the Bethany Republican Clipper. The more I hear about this event, the more I wish I had lived here then. My favorite article in this special edition was written by Elmer Rinehart “Skeeter Creek Poet”. Elmer was 94 when he wrote the piece of for the special edition and in it, he reminisced about Ridgeway’s past. He divided the history into two periods: the horse and buggy days and the car and tractor period. Ridgeway’s stockyard was a busy place and on Saturday afternoons, there would be so many teams of horses that there was hard to find a place to “park”. Later, during the car era, much the same scene occurred with people coming into town to go to the concert held at the bandstand every Wednesday and Saturday night, or see the latest motion picture, then do their trading at one of the businesses that stayed open until midnight. Ridgeway must have really been a busy place then.
