On July 15, 1886, Orlando Babcock and others bought about 29 acres of woodland northwest of the BCR&N Short Line bridge over the Shell Rock River to create a park for picnicking, fishing, and camping, only a ten-minute railroad ride from Waverly. On August 5, 1886, The Waverly Republican announced a Harvest Picnic at the new Riverside Park, also called Short Line or Winslow Park, with round-trip fare not to exceed 30 cents, urging Waverly residents to ride the new railroad, bring picnic baskets and family, and enjoy a Cornet Band. The entire 1st St. SW area developed as an industrial and transportation corridor, and the land at the top of the street, where the Historic Rock Island Depot now stands, belonged to William Sturdevant. Rick Sturdevant, a descendant of the namesake of the platted SW Waverly neighborhood, recalled growing up in Waverly and hearing the steam engine whistle as trains came down the hill by the golf course, prompting him and his friends to run to the river to meet the train in the narrow space between the riverbank, the Farmers Exchange Building area, and the street. He also remembered an engineer offering the boys a ride on the engine and assuring them he knew where they lived and would drop them at the highway so they could run home. In a letter, Jim VanHeel wrote that Ben VanHeel served as the Rock Island Railroad agent from 1919 until retiring in 1953 and helped secure railroad shipping for companies including large furniture stores, the Plainfield Creamery shipping butter by the carload, monument works, clam shells sent to Muscatine, and even automobiles. He added that the Freight Depot had a loading platform and brakemen's quarters in the north end, and he remembered riding in the locomotive cab to Waverly Junction and back, shoveling coal, blowing the whistle, and ringing the bell, as well as a substitute engineer once backing the end passenger car over the sidewalk at the depot and onto part of Bremer Avenue. Bumping posts at the rail end were used to stop railroad cars from moving beyond the end of the track.