The town of Gold Bar finds a silver lining in growth _ its first supermarket.

Byline: Janet Burkitt

GOLD BAR, Wash. _ On a recent Saturday, Randy Reeves bought a single roll of toilet paper. Just because he could.

Reeves used to have to drive a half-hour to do his grocery shopping. Naturally, he'd stock up. But earlier this summer, the Gold Bar Family Grocer came to town.

"It's a big deal _ a luxury we haven't had here," Reeves said. "The first day it opened, there were a lot of people sort of standing in the front door like, `Whoa, this is so cool.' "

For years, people in the little city at the foot of the Cascades have longed for a grocery store. But there weren't enough mouths in Gold Bar for a store to feed.

No longer. According to the just-completed 2000 city census, Gold Bar's population has reached 2,000 exactly. The population has nearly doubled in the past decade, making Gold Bar one of the region's fastest-growing cities.

It's also one of the region's smallest cities, but so far, growing pains have been few. In fact, in a time when growth seems like a dirty word, people in Gold Bar say what's happening there feels pretty good.

The people moving in are mostly young…