The community’s website aptly calls Ryderwood “the Village in the Woods.”
At the northwest edge of Cowlitz County to the south of Vader, the town has been a retirement community for the last 70 years. It has 275 privately-owned properties with a minimum occupancy age of 55.
Managed by a homeowner’s association, residents have access to a community hall, library, two parks, a non-denominational church and a coffee shop.
However, the senior citizens of Ryderwood aren’t sitting on their porches knitting sweaters all day. If anything, they prove that retirement means more time to party.
Over the weekend, all were welcomed to the Village in the Woods for the town’s centennial anniversary. They opened a time capsule, showed off history displays, paraded through town and danced to live music. Local artists were there for the celebration, too; the “BaLunatic,” Ken Trombley, made balloon animals and sculptor Wade Lapp made wood carvings.
The celebration also featured a quilt show, a raffle and R.C. boat races. Event organizers have been gearing up for the celebration for several months, donning pioneer costumes to ride in local parades.
Three decades before the town’s revival as a retirement community, it was built as a logging camp. In 1923, the Long-Bell Lumber Co. housed loggers and their families and called Ryderwood the “World's Largest Logging Town.”
The city of Longview was founded that same year. Timber was harvested at Ryderwood — which in 1923 was called Cougar Flats — and brought to be milled and shipped out of Longview via the Columbia River, all thanks to Long-Bell Lumber, founded by Robert A. Long (for whom R.A. Long High School in Longview is named), and Victor Bell.
“Longview was the largest planned city ever built with private funds, and $1.5 million was spent to build Ryderwood, all before the first log was cut,” states the Ryderwood website.
The project was cutting edge for its time, allowing loggers to sleep in their own beds at night, rather than in camps far from their families. With 400 single-family homes, Ryderwood reached a population of around 2,000 and boasted a church, theater, hospital and hotel.
In the 2020 U.S. Census, about 395 people lived in Ryderwood.
Read more about the history of Ryderwood on its website at http://www.ryderwood.org/home.html, which features photographs from throughout the town’s history.
