Riverside (Sioux City, Iowa)

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Riverside is a flat, blue collar residential area on the west side of Sioux City, along the banks and floodplain of the Big Sioux River. Riverside is historically significant as the site of original land holdings of the first white settler in the territory-- Theophile Bruguier. Not surprisingly, the area was settled by people of predominantly French-Canadian heritage-- descendants of early 19th century American Fur Company trappers, packers and "voyageurs" who made their livings along the adjoining Missouri and Big Sioux Rivers. This French-Canadian heritage is still proudly in evidence in some pockets of Riverside, and even more so in the nearby communities of North Sioux City, McCook Lake, Jefferson and Elk Point, in neighboring Union County, South Dakota. The heart and soul of Riverside for decades was Riverside Park, where Bruguier's cabin was discovered and restored in the 1930s. The suburb had its own high school, Riverside High, until the opening of the new West High School in the 1970s.