There was a Mimbres settlement at Riverside,[2] but they were displaced by the Apache[4] and the settlement had been long abandoned by the time the Spanish came to New Mexico.[2] The Spanish did not settle in the area due to the presence of the Chiricahua Apache.
Riverside and the surrounding area in the Gila River Valley were settled by Anglos in 1884, as fear of Apache raiders decreased. The area was and is primarily a ranching and farming community.[5] In 1900, Thomas Jefferson Clark built a two-story hotel in Riverside as a type of caravanserai for travellers on the stage route between Mogollon and Silver City.[6]
The annual Audubon Gila River bird count takes place in Riverside.[7] Students attend the schools in Cliff, which is part of the Silver Consolidated School District.[8]
^ abcBaker, Gayla Sue (1971). The Riverside Site, Grant County, New Mexico. Southwestern New Mexico research reports, number 5. Cleveland, Ohio: Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University. OCLC477494.
^Lamontagne, Monique (1995). "Gila Cliff Dwellings". In Ring, Trudy; Watson, Noelle; Schellinge, Paul (eds.). The Americas: International Dictionary of Historic Places. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 258–260. ISBN978-1-884964-00-8.
^SouthWest New Mexico, Historic Silver City Area Scenic Tours, page 19, 2008.
^Julyan, Robert (1998). "Riverside (Grant County)". The Place Names of New Mexico (revised ed.). Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press. p. 300. ISBN0-8263-1689-1.