Riverside City History
Renner Brenner Site Park

Much of Riverside's early history is now part of the Renner Brenner Site Park. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1969, it was developed by the city in 1986 and formally dedicated in 1991 as an archaeological preserve. Like many area archaeological sites, the Renner Brenner site was originally uncovered in the 1920s by the highly regarded J. Mett Shippee, an amateur archaeologist who worked with Waldo R. Wedel - assistant curator of archaeology of the Smithsonian Institute. Together their findings indicated a significant abundance of prehistoric village debris corresponding to the eastern influence of the Woodland culture. Until their finding, it was thought the Woodland Culture had not extended farther west than the Mississippi River.

The Renner Brenner Site Park is one of the largest prehistoric Woodland sites west of St. Louis that is still at least partially intact. Still other evidence of prehistoric settlement in Riverside dates to around 1,000 BC, by a culture known as Early Woodland, known locally as the Black Sand Culture because of the type of material used in their pottery. That settlement was discovered in the early 1980s just north of the Renner Brenner Site Park.

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