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The Goldendale Sentinel, Goldendale, WA., June 19, 1980, page 14

CLEVELAND CELEBRATES
PICNIC MARKS TOWN'S CENTENNIAL

The crowd attending the 70th annual Pioneer Picnic held at Cleveland Park Sunday was reminded by many picture exhibits that the event marked the centennial for the town of Cleveland.
It was the second town founded in Klickitat County, located five miles west of Bickleton and 40 miles northeast of Goldendale. It sits on the Lower border of the Pine Forest of the Simcoe Mountains with an open plateau stretching southward.
Wheat growing is the principal industry with stock raising next in importance.
The town had its beginning in 1880 or 1881 when Sol Lowenberg, a Goldendale merchant, established a branch store at Cleveland. Ripley Dodge, the founder, had settled the land about 1879.
Dodge soon started a hotel, and later the same year Frank Remington opened another store near Lowenberg's. However, the following fall Dodge when to Arlington, Ore., one of the places with which Cleveland had stage connections.
A blacksmith shop was opened on the Dodge's farm, and a post office was built.
About 1883 Dodge formally laid out the town of Cleveland in honor of the city in Ohio where Dodge was from. Formerly the town was had been called Dodgeville.
In 1885, just before his death, Dodge sold the site to William McCredy.
Sept. 24, 1896 fire swept nearly the whole business section, and a few years later the town was rebuilt.
The town now consists of only a few houses, but grows tremendously once a year when the Pioneer Picnic is held to celebrate Flag Day and to remember those pioneers who played a role in the early development of the community.
That first picnic, held thirty years after the town was founded, included a steam-operated merry-go-round, barbecue pit and brass band.
Ida Vincent, a Goldendale resident who grew up near Cleveland, is one of the few people who had attended almost every picnic since the first one in 1911.
She recalled a windy, chilly day when she went to the picnic with family in a wagon pulled by four horses. Families visited all day in a green meadow that also served as a table at lunch.
She said that during the memorial service everyone sat on planks laid across wooden blocks.
"It's all modern now, you might say."
A mild controversy surrounds the whereabouts of the original carrousel. It was privately owned, and sold some years after the first picnic.
In 1928 a merry-go-round was purchased from the Pioneer Association of Oaks Park, Ore., and many believe it to be the same one sold years before.
The machine deteriorated, and some local people restored it to its present condition in 1968.
Once a year it is opened and reassembled for the Pioneer Picnic.