From this point almost all the way to the San Bernardino county line, US 395 (and US 60 and US 91, when co-designated with either) runs within the City of Riverside, county seat of Riverside county. As we mentioned back in Part 9, the city was incorporated in 1870, named for the Santa Ana River, whose upper canal first reached the city in 1871.
Riverside's founder was John Wesley North (right),
a strict teetotaler, preacher and
abolitionist, who was driven out of Tennessee into California for
talking a mob out of lynching a black man. John W. North
was born in New York in 1815, who attended seminary (as befitted his full
name) and became a licensed lay preacher
despite later studying law
and becoming a licensed lawyer in the state of New York and then the
Minnesota Territory where he moved in 1849.
North rapidly ascended in local politics, serving for a
year as a member of the territory's second legislature in 1850, and was one
of the founders of the Republican Party of Minnesota in 1855, after which he
helped write the state constitution, was a delegate to the national convention
that nominated future President Abraham Lincoln, and was part of founding the
University of Minnesota (serving as treasurer of the board of regents).
During this time, John North purchased 160 acres in Minnesota in 1855 as part of a larger 320 acre tract, platted as the town of Northfield in 1856. However, his business interests in town foundered after the Panic of 1857, a severe and sudden downturn in the national economy fueled by bank collapses and a widespread loss of faith in the government's paper currency not fully resolved until the Civil War, and he sold out to a longtime friend in 1859 and left the area. Fortunately, Abraham Lincoln remembered the once proud figure and appointed him surveyor of the new Nevada Territory in 1861, hoping to use him to keep Nevada loyal to the Union in what was then a very politically sensitive position (and potentially dangerous given the frequent mining territory disputes). Despite the onerous nature of the appointment, North initially did well, investing in local mining and properties as well as continuing to practice law, and his legal reputation and acumen resulted in his becoming the territorial judge for Storey county in 1863. This rapidly ran him afoul of prominent lawyer and competitor William M. Stewart, whose larger mining clients objected to North's rulings which frequently favoured smaller litigants; Stewart went so far as to accuse North of being corrupt and accepting bribes, a story Stewart knew he could not prove and resulted in North successfully suing him for slander, but the impact on North's health was already made and he moved first to northern California in 1865, then Tennessee where he made himself unwelcome with the slaveowners as we had already mentioned, and then southern California, where he and his associates, some of them from his old digs in Minnesota, founded Riverside.
North and his companions tolerated no wildness, no uncouthness and above all no booze. One thing that they did encourage, however, was the importation of good breeding and socially acceptable tradition, resulting in an influx of prosperous foreign investors bringing their diverse cultures to bear on the new golf and polo courses, and most critically agricultural development with the waters of the Santa Ana. (There was likely also some crosspollination with the Mormons, north in San Bernardino. More about that in Part 15.) However, one fruit in particular today remains associated with Riverside, and for many years was its particular claim to fame.
One of North's likeminded fellow citizens in Riverside was Eliza Tibbets, another abolitionist who was similarly run out of the South with her husband Luther Tibbets for attempting to create an integrated community in Virginia, and later for her early efforts at women's suffrage. However, those unsuccessful appeals in the capital had made her the acquiantance of William Saunders, Superintendent of the U.S. Bureau of Agriculture, who was experimenting with a new form of seedless orange imported from Brazil. These navel oranges, so named for their second conjoined twin section resembling an umbilicus, left the plant seedless but able to grow from cuttings descended from a single original orchard in a Brazilian monastery where the mutation was noticed in 1820. Tibbets persuaded Saunders to let her take two of the grafts he prepared and plant them in her garden, which she did in 1873, and Saunders sent the rest to Florida. Ironically the Tibbets' lot did not have access to the Riverside Canal, so she irrigated the plants entirely by hand herself with dishwater, which promptly grew and flourished even as the several hundred other trees Saunders sent died. Navel oranges and Riverside were a perfect match: the trees grew well in the semi-arid climate, the oranges were hardy and could be shipped without significant damage, and their sweet taste and high quality made them immediately popular. Named the Washington navel orange after Saunders' hard work of grafting, Tibbets sold budwood to other local nurserymen who planted their own and groves of trees cloned from Tibbets' original pair blanketed the Inland Empire. By 1895 Riverside was the wealthiest city per capita in the entire country, and the citrus industry became so important that entire secondary industries such as the railroads and mechanical processing companies sprang up to support it. Water supplies were expanded by the opening of the Gage Canal in 1887-8, enabling the groves to grow in greater numbers facilitated by the enhanced irrigation capacity, and the University of California established a research station in 1906, the Citrus Experiment Station that later became the nucleus of modern UC Riverside. With not a scrap of exaggeration it can be definitely said that Tibbets' trees started the chain of events that largely converted agrarian California from wheat and grain farming to fruit.
The Parent Trees, the two original parent navel orange trees that Tibbets so carefully maintained, had two separate fates. One was transplanted in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt to the landmark Mission Inn in downtown Riverside, which we will get to presently; that tree eventually died in the 1920s and was cut up into souvenir crosses, one of which remains in the Mission Inn Museum collection. However, the other is still alive, at the corner of Magnolia Ave and Arlington Ave, and this ancestor and genetic clone of the remaining navel orange trees in the United States still bears fruit even today.
The influx of money into the local economy led to many landmarks and resorts established during the early 20th century at Riverside's peak. Particular among these resorts was the Mission Inn, still in operation, built out of the old Glenwood Cottage by Frank Miller, son of Captain Christopher Columbus Miller who emigrated to Riverside in 1874 to survey for the Gage Canal and was the Cottage's original founder in 1876. The younger Miller was endlessly fascinated by culture and presided over a massive expansion of the property to attract celebrities and national figures to the resort, starting with renaming it the Mission Inn in 1902. During his time overseeing the Inn, Miller is credited with amassing its world-famous historical collection, valued in the millions of dollars, and the bizarre and whimsical construction style he favoured led to its becoming a perennial favourite of presidents from Benjamin Harrison to George W. Bush and entertainers as diverse as Harry Houdini, Bob Hope, Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Drew Barrymore. We will see and discuss more about the Mission Inn on a little detour in this Part.
As for John W. North, however, he saw almost none of this story, as he had already left for San Francisco and a law firm position in 1879. Eventually he settled in Fresno a year later, where he farmed by himself without his wife, who refused to accompany him, until he died in 1890. His body was brought back to Riverside, where he was buried and his grave remains.
Orange groves still dot portions of Riverside today, and the California Citrus State Historic Park preserves some demonstration groves and a museum, but the workers brought in by the railroad boxcarful to pick the groves eventually stayed and made the land more valuable for building than for growing. For a time Riverside had one of the largest Chinatowns in California, but its residents either died or moved out and most of it was razed during the 1970s; a similar fate befell the local African-American neighbourhood near 12th St, but the Eastside is still home to a large Mexican-Oaxacan population. Cheaper land prices relative to the rest of Southern California also attracted a large population boom to Riverside, just as with the communities of southern Riverside county (Part 10), leading to increased air pollution, aggravating gridlock, and a distinct urban sprawl noticible in the city's bizarrely elongated borders. Nevertheless, it still retains the grandeur of its salad days, still visible in the old houses and plots particularly around what is now Victoria Avenue, and is the site of four colleges and whimsically the World's Largest Paper Cup, which is near the old site of the Dixie Cup plant on Iowa Avenue. The current population is 291,398 .
Riverside is the great junction point for three major historic highways in Southern California, namely US 395, of course, succeeded by I-215 and I-15; US 60, succeeded by CA 60 in this region; and US 91, succeeded by CA 91, I-215 and I-15. (Another important and very famous historical highway will join us in San Bernardino when we get to the end of Part 15; I'll just let you guess for now.) Originally US 395 and US 60 continued into the downtown along the old Box Springs Grade and 8th St/modern University Avenue, where they met and separated in the middle of downtown Riverside near Main St with US 91's forerunner, the southern section of CA 18; subsequently there were various minor changes to US 395's exact alignment as the traffic became more than the smaller city streets could bear, but the routing remained generally constant. In 1942, the portion between March Field and 8th Street was expanded to expressway, part of the upgrades we mentioned in Part 12. After US 91 was extended to Long Beach over CA 18 and US 66 in 1947, it too passed through downtown Riverside to meet US 60 and US 395, and this downtown routing of US 395 is primarily the one we will look at here and in the next Part. This state of affairs lasted until 1961 when the initial phase of the modern Moreno Valley Freeway from the eastern interchange to the Riverside Interchange was completed; most of the old Box Springs Grade was either incorporated into, split up by or overrun by the new freeway, and the old routing along University Avenue was completely bypassed, after which further upgrades to the Moreno Valley Interchange and some of the easternmost exits were completed in 1966. We will be proceeding along portions of the freeway necessarily in this Part, but the major construction and the Riverside Interchange will be looked at in more detail in Part 14. The 1954 planning map from Part 12 is reproduced here for your review.
I should also note parenthetically that until at least 1937 US 60 was also co-signed with US 70 through Riverside, the latter being designated in California in 1934 and extended to Los Angeles in 1935. US 60/70 in Riverside didn't last for too long, a decade at most, after which US 70 was moved north to US 99 through Colton and San Bernardino. We won't talk much more about this here as it does not change the route otherwise; US 70 was an anomalous route in California anyway as it was always cosigned with at least one other US highway. We'll talk about it a little more in Part 15 when we reach US 99, but for now, mentally insert US 70 into the below whenever we discuss US 60's very early existence.
Caltrans District 8 is pursuing a massive upgrade project of I-215/CA 60
involving its widening, reconstruction of critical interchanges and signage
replacement. The largest and most complex highway project yet in the Inland
Empire, its construction started in 2004 and is still going on. I intend
to reshoot critical portions of this Part and Part 14
when the construction is completed. We will talk more about what the
upgrade project will accomplish in Part 14. For now,
please excuse any technical glitches with the freeway photos as safe vantage
points were not always available.
Moreno Valley Fwy (Interstate 215/CA 60)
Approaching the Moreno Valley Interchange, this time from the east along
CA 60/old US 60, where this sign welcomes us onto the combined alignment.
However, there is something a little odd about it: not only is it standard
enamel without (much) button copy, and surviving well, but it was clearly
altered as we can see on the contrast enhancement enlargement at right. A CA
60 coverplate covers up what was obviously a US 60 shield (although this was
not always done fully; see the Mass Grave
for a US 60 that's still in the field), but a coverplate was not used
to cover up US 395 and so under the obviously later I-215 the outline of a
three-digit US highway shield is still visible. The I-215 shield is the only
button copy on the entire overhead sign. Caltrans will do
something similar with
the San Bernardino Interchange in Part 17. We
continue as the Moreno Valley Fwy, now I-215/CA 60, into Riverside.
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Descending the Box Springs Grade into Riverside. It appears very little of
the Grade, or Box Springs Boulevard as it appears on some maps, still exists;
although there is a section of road south of the Moreno Valley Interchange
signed as Box Springs Blvd, very little of it resembles the old route and
what little does was subsequently reconstructed into a minimally traverseable
discontinuous alignment. Sycamore Canyon Blvd, which hugs the modern
Interstate to the southwest, probably did incorporate some portions of the
old alignment but is nevertheless mostly rebuilt frontage road that has
little to do with the old asphalt. For this reason, we will simply use the
freeway to mark the route as they are nearly exactly the same.
Box Springs and the Box Springs Mountain [3,047'] directly north was traditionally named for a box set up on a nearby natural spring to reinforce it. Popular with travelers during the end of the 19th century to water their horses, it seems the old springs no longer exist.
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Advance signage for Riverside exits. There used to be a trumpet interchange
at El Cerrito Drive which was torn down and blocked as part of the upgrade
project, but the old interchange can still be seen on
Maps. A view from the doomed interchange I took in 2005 can be seen at
right, including the old bridge; click for a 62K enlargment.
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Caltrans is getting better about signing I-215 and CA 60 together; on many
signs only the Interstate appeared. Still, there aren't many of the shield
signposts left, and in fact this signpost I snapped in 2005 doesn't even
exist anymore. Likely this will improve after the end of the upgrade.
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The original University Avenue exit looked like this in 2005, and even then
was not much changed from the semi-trumpet shown in the image at right shortly
after the construction of the freeway in 1961.
In those days, University
Ave was still called 8th Street. Although the exit and
interchange are part of the construction zone, it appears the basic layout
will not be changed much still.
The reason for still including this otherwise uninteresting 2005 shot in the current edition is the Business Route signage that persisted until it was torn down about a year later. If we compare the 1954 planning map above with the 1963 map at right, on the 1954 map the US 60/US 395 expressway is seen to abruptly end at 8th and diverge west into the downtown, but on the 1963 map the extended Moreno Valley Fwy (inexplicably marked as the Escondido Fwy, which is clearly wrong) bypasses the old alignment which now has BUSINESS shields. There are no BUSINESS banners or shields up on University Avenue anymore for either 215 or 60, but there are BUSINESS 60 signs still up in Rubidoux and Moreno Valley along the old alignments there.
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This is a placeholder for the new exit photography. For right now, we'll just
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US 395 via
University Avenue (Old Eighth Street) and
Downtown Riverside (1934-1961)
University Avenue, and old 8th St before it, terminated just east of the freeway at what is now the University of California Riverside. As mentioned above, what is now the modern University started with the UC Citrus Experiment Station, originally established on the eastern slope of Mount Rubidoux to the west in 1907. Expanded after the freeze of 1913 ruined that year's citrus crop, the CES moved down to the Box Springs Mountains outside of Riverside and rapidly increased its research operations. During its early days, new director Herbert J. Webber personally presided over six agricultural divisions focusing on breeding, pest control and management which grew to cover research on virtually every major crop grown in the state. A rise in college enrollment after World War II and the GI Bill led to a successful lobby to establish a new branch of the University of California next door to the CES, and the undergraduate college opened in 1954 with graduate students admitted starting in 1961. In acknowledgement of its history, some of the world's most important research collections on citrus research remain at UCR, but the University also maintains important liberal arts programs and professional programs in management and education, and in the future plans to open the first California medical school in 40 years in 2012. Its undergraduate enrollment is 14,973 . We turn around here to head west into Riverside.
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This is why you don't let construction companies build signs unsupervised.
(The use of the Alternate banner is inappropriate -- it should be detour --
and CA 91 is neither an Interstate nor a business route.)
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In fact, they probably shouldn't be doing signage at all.
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West of the 215/60, we continue on this pretty tree-lined route into the
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Looking back at the interchange, where on this older sign Indio was the only
signed control city. This is being upgraded.
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The University Extension building.
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Iowa Avenue, leaving the University district.
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The city of Riverside has helpfully put up these "TO 91" signs around town
for when the old highway is in use as a bypass or detour. There are several
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The neighbourhoods of Riverside are heralded on these signs with the city's
"raincross" logo. This is the Eastside district, named for being on the
east side, of course.
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WB University Ave/old US 60/old US 395.
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One of the local parks.
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Eastside has a large minority Latino
population, traditionally from southern Mexico
and Oaxaca. Old 8th St takes a sharp
jog here and starts to descend into the downtown and the Santa Ana River plain.
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The north end of Victoria Avenue, one of the main plumb lines of the city.
Victoria, like Magnolia Avenue to the north (old US 91), meanders nearly
lengthwise across Riverside through many of the old historic districts until
its classic mainline ends at La Sierra (a small stub continues west of there).
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Our approach to the modern Riverside Freeway (CA 91 here) is heralded by
several overcrossings, here the Southern Pacific Railroad.
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After that comes Santa Fe Ave and Vine St ...
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... with a Union Pacific Railroad shield attached to the superstructure.
The UP and the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad are the major
railroads operating in this region, and we'll discuss a little of their
past in Part 15.
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Advance signage for the Riverside Fwy interchange.
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Junction CA 91, the modern Riverside Fwy, which today runs as only a shadow
of its former self between Artesia and Riverside (see the Mass Grave entry
on US 91). This section of the Riverside
Fwy was built originally from 1957
to 1959 as LRN 43 (1917, one of the oldest routings
in the state highway system) and was since expanded as part of the
60-91-215 project we discussed above, including this newly upgraded bridge
built in 2003 (see Part 14).
During that time of initial construction, US 395 joined US 91 here and headed
north towards San Bernardino on the continuation of the Riverside Fwy; I will
add some photography of this when the Riverside Interchange construction is
completed. For now, we cross under the bridge into the downtown district.
This first junction with CA 91 is probably a good time to discuss CA 18 a little more. As we mentioned above, what was US 91 south of San Bernardino and what remains CA 91 today was originally all CA 18, routed also on LRN 43, until US 91 was extended south in 1947 over US 66 to San Bernardino and then CA 18 to Long Beach. However, for some inexplicable reason, CA 18 remained unnecessarily signed over US 91 for over a decade later until it was finally removed around 1961 and truncated to its present-day terminus in San Bernardino. On purpose I will not mention CA 18 everywhere it occurs in the following Parts since by and large its presence is synonymous with US 91 in Riverside and southern San Bernardino counties, but I will point it out periodically as a reminder and in those few areas where it specifically makes a difference.
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Riverside's historic downtown is a combination of small shops, offices
and residences mated with medium height professional buildings and small
modern skyscrapers. This will be apparent over the next series of pictures.
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Let's Play "Where's 395"
Junction Main Street and the Mission Inn District, where we get to play everyone's favourite game show, Where's 395!
The beginning and end of US 395's alignments in Riverside are pretty well defined: it went down Main Street in the Beginningtm, crossing over to the La Cadena Drive alignment towards San Bernardino; and in the Endtm, it ran on the Riverside Fwy, which is now I-215. As in all things, the problem is what it did during the Middletm.
The map sequence at right shows the progression of US 395's routing through downtown. In 1934, when it was first designated, this was where US 395 and US 60 (and briefly US 70) met CA 18 coming up from the coast on LRN 43; US 395 then turned north with CA 18 (remember, US 91 did not exist in Riverside in those days) and continued with it north, also on LRN 43. In 1937 US 395 and CA 18 are still on Main St, although an extension of Market St to the south is emerging parallel to it. Between 1937 and 1947, US 395 and CA 18 was shifted to the new Market St, using 1st St as a connector stub to Main St (which is illustrated on the 1947 map showing CA 18, US 91 and US 395 on Market after US 91 was extended), and in 1959, US 91/CA 18 and US 395 were switched to the new Riverside Freeway. This persisted all the way to 1961 when 8th Street was also bypassed, this time by the Moreno Valley Fwy, and US 395 moved there with US 60. As for US 60, it continued north with (US 91/CA 18) and US 395 for another block and then left east on the continuation of LRN 19 towards Pomona on 7th St, now Mission Inn Avenue, a small jog which is not always correctly shown on these older maps.
The fly in the ointment is the 1936 official state map, which gives LRN 43
as traveling on Orange Avenue, a routing that appears on no other map
in my collection. I have chosen to ignore this discordance, since I doubt it
would switch to and
suddenly back within such a short time, and even if Gousha were inaccurate
I doubt the ACSC would be (the 1937 and 1933 maps respectively). For the
remainder of this section we will travel the first Fork, down the Main Street
Pedestrian Mall on foot, up to the corner of 1st and Main where our two
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Main Street Pedestrian Mall (1934-1940s)
Turning north, now as CA 18/US 395, since this southernmost section doesn't appear to have ever been signed as US 91 before LRN 43 was moved west to Market Street. Main St today is closed to thru vehicular traffic, but contrary to popular belief this decision had nothing to do with US 395 or US 91 at all. Instead, the Main Street Pedestrian Mall was a conscious attempt to redevelop the city downtown after external shopping malls started stealing customers away in the 1950s. Part of the plan included a new city hall, new convention centre and even a performing arts centre, the latter never eventually completed. Main St was torn up in the spring of 1966 (long after the Riverside Fwy was completed) and the mall opened in November to a very rough start: larger retailers found the layout confining, preferring the larger store lots of the external malls, and the slow decline of local tourist attractions such as the 1970s Mission Inn (to be discussed presently) failed to attract shoppers and tourists. However, prospects brightened considerably when the Mission Inn was renovated and reopened during the 1990s, and local shops and eateries moved in to capitalize on the suddenly revitalized downtown. The seven-block mall continues to flourish and is due for its first major facelift within the next few years.
Several monuments dot the mall, which we'll take a look at in turn. This one is for Dosan Ahn Chang-ho (1878-1938), the noted Korean independence activist and an early leader of the Korean-American community. Born in what is now Pyongyang, North Korea, he emigrated to the United States in 1902 in an effort to expand his education, becoming a local community leader in San Francisco and a figure in Korean communities throughout the state. Ahn was an admirer of the California Fruit Growers Exchange in Riverside, lauding it as a key example of cooperation and observing that "to pick even one orange with sincerity in an American orchard will make a contribution to our country." (The CFGE today is Sunkist, and remains a cooperative non-profit organization.) Alarmed when Japan forced Korea to sign a protectorate treaty in 1905, Ahn returned to his home only to flee again shortly before Korea was finally annexed by Japan in 1910. Continuing his community work in the meantime, Ahn left the United States for China when the 1919 Korean independence movement broke forth, became a key force in founding the exile Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (1919-1948), and was one of the two authors of the South Korean national anthem, the aegukga. His activities gained him the attention of the Japanese police, who imprisoned him in 1932 for four years. His time in prison surely affected his health. Arrested again in 1937 just prior to the Sino-Japanese War, he was released for health reasons and died in Seoul in 1938. His importance to the modern state of South Korea cannot be underestimated, and his name graces a park in Seoul, the memorial here, his family home in Los Angeles, the 10/110 interchange in Los Angeles, and the corner of Jefferson Blvd and Van Buren Place in Los Angeles.
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Continuing north through the Pedestrian Mall with some of the local shops.
The Mission Inn is now visible in the background.
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Crossing Mission Inn Avenue towards the Inn. Until US 395/CA 18 was
shifted west to Market, this was where US 60/70 diverged west to Pomona
and Los Angeles. Since we are so close to the Inn and it is key in Riverside's
history, let's go over and take a look.
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Detour: The Mission Inn
Looking at the courtyard of the Mission Inn from Mission Inn Avenue, old Seventh Street. As we mentioned in the introduction, the Mission Inn started as the "Glenwood Cottage," variously called the Glenwood Tavern by some sources, which was built and owned by Christopher Columbus Miller in 1876. Miller's son Frank took over operations in 1902, renaming it the Mission Inn, and set about expanding the two-story, 12-room house into a full-fledged resort.
What sets the Mission Inn apart, however, was the way in which Miller expanded it, which could even be conceivably called completely nuts. Miller drew from a massive variety of unrelated architectural styles from a variety of eras, including Spanish, Moroccan, Mediterranean, Chinese, Renaissance and others, and incorporated a staggering collection of structural motifs into the design such as flying buttresses, outside arcades, towers, minarets and even a skybridge. One particularly notorious section even had a smaller scale, as Miller designed it for his midget sister. In his quest to expand and vary the hotel, Miller sought out and brought back fascinating treasures and artifacts to exhibit in the museum's collection that today are estimated worth over $5 million. At the end of Miller's spasm of construction, his hotel took over nearly the entire city block for several stories up.
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Miller's game was to attract celebrity attention from the very beginning,
starting with President Theodore Roosevelt who transplanted one of Eliza
Tibbets' famous orange trees to the grounds in 1903 as we mentioned in the
and possibly as premonition, it later died. Again, as we mentioned
above, ten U.S. presidents have visited
the Inn (sitting or otherwise),
all the way from Harrison in the early days to Dubya today along with
a long list of social glitterati and entertainers. The cachet of the hotel
carried on even after Miller died in 1935 and the hotel continued
to prosper under the management
of his daughter and her husband until 1953, after they both died.
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After their death the Inn passed through the hands of several owners, some
for only a very short period. Some rooms were converted to apartments and
others fell into disrepair, the owners citing the cost of maintaining the
unusual building structure, despite its designation as a United States
National Historic Landmark in 1977. Acquired in 1985 by an investment group,
Carley Capital Group stated they planned to renovate and reopen the hotel with
a projected $30 million price tag;
unfortunately, $30 million became over $55 million and Carley went bankrupt,
leaving the inn in receivership until it was bought in 1992 by local
businessman and booster Duane R. Roberts. Roberts completed the renovations
and reopened the hotel to full operations, and such is the hotel today.
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Regrettably I was not able to get some shots of the dining areas while I was
there that day due to a convention. I'll rectify that for the next edition.
In the meantime, we'll head back to Main St
and we'll see more of the exterior as we walk along.
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Another sculpture is this fascinating one to Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), India's most famous spiritual and political leader and the major figure in establishing India's independence from the British Empire. Gandhi is such a well-known figure that I won't bore you with another rehash of his biography, instead directing you to the excellent Wikipedia entry.
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This sculpture is a recent addition, as indicated by its plaque which gives
its dedication in 2005. It was dedicated by Gandhi's grandson, Rajmohan
Gandhi, and the Mayor of Riverside.
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One of the nearby mini-towers, in this case the 11-story California Tower,
now containing offices for the State of California in what used to be
the old Security Pacific National Bank building (vacated after SPNB marged
with Bank of America in 1992).
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Some of the landscaping along the mall is very attractive, including this
small peaceful fountain ...
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... watched over by a nearby wind mobile.
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Beside us continues the outside of the Inn and some of its outdoor dining
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Like I said, Miller was nuts. Notice some of the wild ornamentation and
one of his classic flying buttresses, along with the very tall tower.
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The nerd in me was fascinated by the PA system, again with the distinctive
Riverside raincross. Oh, and there is Wi-Fi.
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And as a passing goodbye, here is a skybridge, stretching
across 6th St from the Mission Inn to this old brick building across the street
which seems to be part of the parking structure.
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Between 6th and 5th Main St has a small traffic passable section, not technically part of the Mall.
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This is dotted by similar small local businesses, although when I passed
through most of the lots were under renovation, for lease or not open.
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This small stretch of driveable Main St ends here at 5th St and the
Riverside Convention Center.
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Riverside Convention Center
was part of the Pedestrian Mall upgrades, built and
opened in the 1970s. It offers over 45,000 sq ft of meeting space in 15
rooms which yours truly has personally been to several times. And it has
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Old Main St continues under the asphalt of the parking lot, so we will also,
still on foot.
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An old stretch of what might be original asphalt just before the
intersection as we emerge onto driveable surface at 3rd St.
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A unique street light style overlooks us.
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Finally, 1st and Main Sts. We will come back to this point in the next Part,
but first we have to traverse the parallel alignment on Market Street. That's
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