Riverside Avenue Topography

The history of Riverside Avenue displays a series of events that were both naturally occurring and instigated by humans. It is clear that this is an unstable area of weak land that is prone to landslides. It is also clear that despite decade after decade of encountering the same problem, people can not easily accept that they are not mightier than nature.

This issue likely did not just begin when there were newspapers to report on the events. With that being said, the earliest newspaper report of action on Riverside Avenue begins in 1931 with the efforts to widen the road and make Riverside Avenue a more "attractive boulevard." This includes the construction of sidewalks, curbing, sewage systems, and ornamental light poles with underground cable wires. Two decades later, Riverside Avenue becomes a hot topic in the paper again, this time in the form of natural disasters. In 1955, Riverside Ave endured three washout events, and each time the city just "patched up" and repaired the street. Supposedly an unused culvert eroding the road foundation was the instigator of these events. The trilogy of these events swallowed several yards of land and pine trees. It is worth noting that trees are an important anchor to land that helps hold the integrity of the land together, without trees, this land is all the more unstable. In 1959, another landslide occurs due to heavy rains. Not surprisingly, the city attempted to repair the damages once again, only for another large landslide to occur the following decade in 1968, and once again in 1977. In 1981, a new scapegoat enters the news, as a business owner requests for fill to be illegally deposited on the banks of his property on Riverside in efforts to maintain his land that was continually crumbling away. As anticipated, the land gives way and in 1983 the city and state begin to take more serious and long-term efforts to remediate the problem. In 2019, a large landslide occurred to remind Burlington that it is not really possible to permanently stop nature from doing as nature does.