1883-84: The River Stop Story Begins…

It was an election year. The candidates' campaigns were both marred by scandal. The Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland, who had been governor of New York, was reported to have had an illegitimate son with a young widow. Rather than deny the charges, Cleveland stepped up, admitted the affair, and took responsibility. This diffused the situation and eyes turned to his Republican opponent, James Blaine, who was accused of taking bribes from a railroad in exchange for a land grant. (Sound familiar?) Cleveland won the election by a narrow margin and began the first of two non-successive terms.

The women's suffrage movement was gaining momentum and on 8 March, Susan B. Anthony petitioned Congress for women's right to vote. A suffragist who devoted much of her life to the cause, Ms. Anthony died in 1906, fourteen years before the amendment, nicknamed in her honor the "Anthony Amendment," would be ratified in August of 1920.

And if you thought that women had it tough enough, back in England, it was the vote of working class males in rural areas that was at stake. William Gladstone negotiated the 1884 Reform Act, which would enfranchise more than 6 million men, allowing non-bluebloods to vote.

1884 was a year of important architecture in the U.S. While the Robinson Building (now the River Stop Café) was being finished from Chicago brick in Newaygo, the completion of the Washington Monument was occurring in our nation's Capital, Washington D.C.   It was also the year that the Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States and its cornerstone laid.

In nearby Battle Creek, John Harvey Kellogg patents corn flakes, while George Eastman was granted a patent for photographic film. The "Kodak" camera, introduced in 1888, sold for $25, almost two months wages for the average worker. The first roller coaster in the US made its first run in Coney Island, New York, and Dow Jones published its first average, while the US Navy established its Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

For "storm chasers," 1884 brought tornados into focus as the first funnel cloud was reportedly captured on film in the Dakota Territory. More than sixty tornados swept southeastern states that year, with casualty estimates ranging from anywhere between 150 and 2,000.

Back home in the United Kingdom, the First Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published, and a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the area southeast of Colchester, England. It was felt as far away as Belgium and France, and it destroyed several villages.

Across the pond, an earthquake centered in Jamaica Bay also rattled windows, knocked down chimneys, and caused damage in New York City and the surrounding area. Its effects were felt from Maine to Virginia and west to Ohio,  but thankfully, Bob Marley's lineage remained uninterrupted.

The River Stop Café Today

Owner Robbin Faulkner has developed the River Stop Café from a tiny gourmet coffee house opened across the street in 1995 to its current location, originally opened in January of 2000.  The building was in a state of near-collapse when purchased in 1998, and almost two years of blood, sweat, and tears from father and son team Ken and Scott Faulkner restored the building to what you see now.  The River Stop building is in fact four full floors, which includes a full rock-wall cellar, and two upper floors, all fully restored.