One of the Ryderwood pioneers was my grandfather, LeRoy "Roy" Merchant Sr. He hailed from Rich Hill, Missouri, about seventy miles south of Long-Bell's headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. Hearing about the new operations out West and wanting to avoid a coal-mining life like his father's, he and a friend hopped the rails to Ryderwood in 1923. They arrived to find the town still under construction, so they headed to Eastern Washington to try their hands at apple-picking.
After the fruit was harvested, Ryderwood's forests then stood ready to be tackled by these teenaged loggers-to-be. The bachelor bunkhouse became home to the two, with Long-Bell deducting room and board from their pay.
Roy's life in Ryderwood probably was not dissimilar to those of the many other men attracted to this domesticated logging camp. In 1924 he met Ruth Pettit, who was visiting her sister and brother-in-law in the area. Like others in Ryderwood, once there Roy didn't wander too far. Isolated in nature like most logging camps, the town was the dead-end of what is today known as State Highway 506.
Car ownership was the exception, not the rule. Ruth, therefore, knew Roy was love struck when he found a way to visit her at her parents' house in Puyallup, about a hundred miles from Ryderwood. With a little hard-earned money under his belt, Roy married Ruth in June 1925, and they moved into one of the four-room houses in town, which is the home today for some retired couple. LeRoy Jr., affectionately known as "Sonny," came along on Roy's twenty-second birthday, March 24, 1926. Now the three of them really did fit the design of Ryderwood--a family logging camp.