The Dockside Saloon & Restaurant opened its doors on September 15, 1986. Prior to that, the restaurant “What’s Up Doc” occupied the building and before that it was home to “Dot’s Sternwheeler”. It has always been some sort of restaurant and in the early years served as a commissary for the train workers. By our best guess, the building was built around 1925.
Our real claim to fame was the finding of the Tonya Harding garbage that was to be the downfall of the Olympic Skater. On January 30, 1994, the owner, Kathy Peterson was emptying the garbage when she came upon several bags of trash that somebody had left in the dumpster. Upon examination of the garbage some very damaging evidence was found that led Tonya and her associates to be found guilty of the Nancy Kerrigan “Club” incident. The most damaging paper that was found was an envelope with information concerning Nancy Kerrigan’s practice schedule at her home rink the Tony Kent Arena. The handwriting was found to be Tonya’s. She had earlier denied any involvement in the whole affair, but the garbage proved otherwise. To our knowledge, neither Tonya Harding nor any of her cohorts have ever visited the Dockside, we think they came upon the dumpster and thought they could save themselves a trip to the transfer station which is located about 5 miles from here. What a mistake that was! During those couple of weeks in January ’94 we gave 63 interviews to various newspapers, magazines and TV shows. Who would have ever thought that the Dockside would be in the middle of such a notorious scandal? We joke that we’re best known for our garbage, but we think our food is pretty darned good and we hope that you do to.
Please remember this…be careful where you dump your trash, you never know who might find it.