Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Riverside, TX

Riverside is a small city in Walker County, East Texas, perched on a high bluff on the west bank of the Trinity River.

The Houston and Great Northern Railroad founded Riverside in 1872, and the post office was moved there from Newport on February 23, 1872, making the new town a hub for both rail and river freight.

Cotton fields surrounded early Riverside; by the mid-1880s it had about 200 residents, a gristmill, two hotels and two general stores, and lumber later replaced cotton as the leading industry.

Riverside faded to about fifty residents by 1914, then got a second wind in 1920 when fuller's earth was discovered nearby and two refining plants were established.

The town sits near the point where the Trinity River empties into Lake Livingston, between national forest lands, and draws anglers, hunters and boaters to the Piney Woods outdoors.

The 2020 census counted just 522 residents in Riverside, living in 231 households, with a median age of 46 — nearly three in ten residents were 65 or older.

Riverside students attend schools in the Huntsville Independent School District; the town's own school merged into Huntsville's in 1975, and the old school building now serves as a church.

Two notable natives put Riverside on the map: singer-actress Jennifer Holliday, who created the role of Effie in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, and Eugene C. Barker, the longtime University of Texas historian.

The city covers only about 2.2 square miles and has a humid subtropical climate of hot, humid summers and generally mild winters.