Ryderwood, WA

Ryderwood is a Cowlitz County CDP west of Vader, known locally as the Village in the Woods. Long-Bell Lumber Company built it in 1923 as a planned logging town, alongside the company's new mill city of Longview. The town was designed to house families as well as workers, with a school, church, theater, hotel, hospital, mercantile, and community hall. The name honors W. F. ‘Uncle Bill’ Ryder, the timber cruiser who located the forest that fed Long-Bell's operations. Its planned scale was unusual for a timber settlement, with homes and civic buildings laid out before the first logs moved toward Longview.

The town changed lanes in 1953, when Long-Bell sold it to Senior Estates, Inc., and Ryderwood became a retirement community. That second chapter still shapes the village, but the logging plan remains visible in the streets and old buildings. Ryderwood Lake was built in 1956 inside a former gravel pit and covers six acres, with Becker Creek west of town and Campbell Creek to the east. The Winlock Pickersfest began here in the 1980s before moving to Winlock in 2000. Ryderwood is a place with two clear histories: a company-built timber town and a later community organized around retirement, the lake, and the surrounding woods.