RIXFORD: An opera house in Rixford? Believe it!
That was one of the gems we uncovered when researching the history of Rixford, one of the many small villages in the area which were once much busier and populous than they are now.
Rixford, lying just 10 miles from Bradford on the eastern end of Looker Mountain Trail, currently consists of a post office, a tavern, two auto body shops, a commercial pizza shop and approximately 300 residents.
Going back in time just far enough that some of you readers may remember — say, the 1960s — Rixford had its own grade school, a Jeep dealership, three gas stations, two grocery stores, a hardware store, a beauty shop, a drug store/soda foundation, a barber shop and a convenience store in addition to the aforementioned businesses, minus the pizza shop and approximately twice the population. Quite a contrast in one’s lifetime, to be sure.
But let’s regress every further back in time, back to the heyday of the oil boom and Rixford’s “glory days.”
It was in 1872 oil was first discovered beneath the village with the first well being drilled in 1877. With the original method of extracting oil, by the turn of the century, most of the wells were dry.
Two major fires helped reduce the town to almost nothing in the late 1800s but “modern” drilling and extracting technology in the 1920s led to another “boom” and an infusion of people hoping to strike it rich. The population swelled to a high of 3,000 people and the little village prospered.
At one time, the business district incorporated the following establishments: six boarding houses, five grocery stores, four restaurants, three railroads, two opera halls and a peacock farm down on Clark Street. For real.
To go back somehow and live with those pioneers would be interesting yet tedious and difficult. No TV, no internet, no smart phone. Gasp! Impossible, we imagine, for some of our younger readers to envision but then some of us senior citizens would jump at the chance to return to the simple times of yesteryear.
Maybe for just a brief nostalgic visit, or maybe to relive their life. Regardless, the past has passed and we are unable to go return except in our minds where memories are forever stored.
We should all share our knowledge and our stories with others, especially our younger relatives and friends. Towns, businesses and people all die eventually but history lives forever.
