The Sea Coast Echo

TRIP AND A VISIT TO
RIVERSIDE, CALIF.

Editorial Correspondence to The Sea Coast Echo.

RIVERSIDE, Calif., Jan. 12.—Can you imagine a trolley trip 60 miles through an orange-laden grove, with the mountains on both sides in their majesty and picturesqueness as a background setting?

Today we made the trip through this scene, through California's world's famous "Orange Empire."

Leaving Los Angeles over the Pacific Electric to which system I will make a short reference later straight as an arrow flies to the target, the trolley train makes its flight from the corner of Sixth and Main streets, to the heart of the great empire.

The train leaves frequently throughout the day. Ours left at 9:00 A. M., and a few miles later from the Covina Junction, we enter the gardens and orchards of the Southland.

Moments pass swiftly by and Covina, the foot-hill jewel western gateway of the Orange Empire is reached!

From Covina to Etiwanda, the route is highly productive groves of the citrus districts. The train, shortly after leaving Etiwanda passes abruptly into the mammoth grape district, entering "Orangeland" again at Fontana, thence through Rialto and Bloomington, citrus fruit centers to Riverside.

This sixty-mile run has been one of beauty and interest indeed. The orange trees—through this valley—from both sides of the car track and as far as the vision will carry to the mountain sides, are laden with their golden charge. It is a sight never to be forgotten. Every few miles the route is dotted with some rose embowered town bearing some of fanciful name as pretty and always appropriate to the picture. The whole stretch of land with its fruits and flowers has been likened to some poem and the towns seemingly serve as punctuation marks.

But the end of our trip is reached and we are at Riverside, a city of possibly some thirty thousand or more population, and after alighting we are soon at that point around which Riverside revolves or we might say the one of the many big attractions of Southern California—the Glenwood Mission Inn, only hotel of its kind in the world. This is the dream of Frank Miller, the owner, created into a reality with the assistance of his sister, Mrs. Richardson, a most charming and practical person, and of both people whose acquaintance we were charmed to form through personal letters of our townsman, Mr. J. N. Wisner.

David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University has said:

"It has been left for you, Frank Miller, a genuine Californian, to dream of the hotel that ought to be, to turn your ideal into plaster and stone, and to give us in mountain-belted Riverside the one hotel which a Californian can recognize as his own."

Elbert Hubbard the sage of East Aurora, visiting the Glenwood Mission, said:

"There was a line of these missions a hundred years ago, skirting the coast from San Diego to San Francisco, just a day's journey apart. These missions were refuge and a home for the worn traveler—he could stay as long as he wished and pay what he could afford, and when he went away he took with him the blessing of these men of God. And if they served mankind and made the world better, were they not truly men of God? I think they were, and any man who does the same now is too. This hotel is built and furnished after the general style of the mission. Its mission is to serve mankind and benefit humanity. And surely if one of these good old monks could drop in here he would think he was in Paradise. The place is really most luxurious yet the luxury is so subdued and unobtrusive that you do not notice it—it ministers to your every want. When we were shown to these rooms there was that great half bushel basket of roses—the morning dew still on them—upon the dresser, and baskets of fruit oranges, bananas, peaches and plums—on the table. A pitcher of ice water is at hand and in the funny little corner cupboard are sugar and lemons and things, galore. And if run short of lemons, why, we can just lean out of the casement and pick a few from that tree where the mocking bird warbles us welcome. No servants seem to be in sight—they move with soft slippered feet and everywhere we find this same quiet courtesy and good cheer and loving attention."

What the Mission Inn Represents

The Mission Inn is the reflection of a personality: it is a sentiment expressed in concrete terms. Mr. Frank A. Miller, the originator, planner, builder and owner of this hotel has lived in Riverside since 1874 and is therefore entitled to be called "an old Californian," although in years he is comparatively a young man.

Now Mr. Miller, like many of the old Californians and others, has always been greatly interested in the history of the beginnings of our civilization on the Pacific Coast, as represented by the Franciscan padres during the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century.

But in order that you may see the connection between those old Mission buildings and this new Mission Inn, between the Spanish Eighteenth and the American Twentieth Century I shall need to tell you a little bit about the old Missions. I promise you it will not be long, and can almost assure you that it won't be tiresome. Of course, you can skip this part if you want to.

Well, here is a little bit of:

The Story of the Missions.

In 1767 the Spanish king, Charles the Third sent a military expedition from Mexico City to upper California, under the leadership of Gaspar de Portola, with instructions to establish forts or presidios at San Diego and Monterey bays.

The object in building forts, in what was then an uninhabited land, was to keep back Russia from any Southward move into Spanish territory. The fact is that Russia got a sort of toe hold in California, although not a foot hold, and has left us a reminder of that fact in the name of one of our rivers—the Russian river. If Russia and not Spain had gained possession of upper California, the history of the Pacific Coast would have been very different.

You will remember in the history of Spain that the sword and the cross have always gone together; that in her conquests, discoveries and colonization schemes the priest and the soldier have always marched side by side.

It was so in this instance for along with Portola and his troops came Fray Junipero Serra and his fifteen Spanish Franciscans. The purpose of those sandaled, corded and brown-robed sons of St. Francis was to effect the spiritual conquest of upper California—that is the conversion and civilization of the Indians, of whom there were quite a number then. This military, religious expedition reached San Diego Bay in July 1769, and the founding of the first Mission was celebrated there at that time.

Of course, there was a great difference between the founding and the construction of a mission. The "founding" consisted of the erection of a rustic cross, the ringing of a bell, swung from some nearby tree, the celebration of mass and the naming of the mission. The building of the mission was a very different matter.

For instance, the mission of San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1776 but it was not completed and dedicated until 1806.

Between 1769 and 1823 there was founded twenty-one missions extending along the California coast from San Diego northward to a point beyond San Francisco Bay. They were placed at strategic points, thirty or forty miles one from the other, or "a day's journey apart," and they were connected by the "Camino Real" or king's highway, along which we roll in our autos today with such ease and comfort, but which was then traveled by sandaled, brown-robed Franciscans, through heat and dust, slowly, step by step.

The hot sands scorched their sandal shoon
Where the cactus studded the plain;
But those friars of old, who sought no gold,
Sang, and kept on again.

In 1833 the Mexican government, by a decree of sequestration, confiscated all the mission property and the building passed into private hands. The new owners stripped the tiles from the roofs, tore the heavy beams from the ceilings and hauled away the hewn stones that entered into the mission construction.

The mission period was at an end. The Franciscans were scattered; the Indians were dispersed, and the great mission buildings plundered and despoiled.

Riven and shattered by shock and storm, beaten upon by the unchecked rains of over seventy winters, and being in large part constructed of sun dried "adobe" bricks—the California missions are today in the majority of instances, nothing but mournful, although picturesque, ruins. The one notable exception is the mission of Santa Barbara that has never been allowed to fall into decay.

As for what was accomplished for the welfare of the Indians during the mission regime, 1769-1833, interested persons are referred to McGroarty's "History of California"; Wharton James', "In and Out of the Old Missions"; or the "Mission Play" as presented at the Mission Theatre at San Gabriel.

Out of it all stands forth one man prominently and pre-eminently, Fray Junipero Serra, the apostle of Christian civilization on the Pacific Coast, and one whose place and name grow larger as people come to understand better what was the task he set himself to perform, and how unselfishly, wisely and heroically he labored for its realization under very many and grievous disadvantages.

How the Mission Inn Came to Be.

Mr. Frank A. Miller, appreciating the importance, historic and sentimental of the old mission buildings those earliest monuments of Christian civilization on the Pacific coast and having long felt the charm associated with the mission period, its romance and its high idealed heroism, has for years cherished the plan of some day reproducing here in Riverside, so far as it was possible, the actual outlines of one of those Franciscan Missions. He has endeavored to furnish it throughout in the simple and yet most comfortable "Mission style," necessarily idealized and with a background of Twentieth Century luxury, and then has earnestly striven to impart to it all the spirit of those old mission days, the spirit of the courtesy and kindliness and true, frank hospitality; the spirit that makes for peace and quiet and rest. "Enter, friend, this is your house," is the motto in Spanish that greets you as you stand at the main entrance—in other words "make yourself at home."

Then in the lobby, hung in a conspicuous place is this old homely Scotch sentiment: "Ye canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable." In other words relax, stretch out, loaf and invite your soul to be comfortable.

I want to say, for the benefit of those who do not know otherwise, that there was never any old mission or church here or in Riverside that this is a new building from foundations to the top of Carmel Tower; that the main building was erected in 1902, the Cloister wing in 1910, and the Spanish Wing in 1915.

The building is made of brick and concrete of the very best construction and is as solid as a mountain.

The Mission Inn occupies an entire city block, is three stories high, and is built about three sides of a great open court full of lawn, shrubs, flowers and tropical plants. Around three sides of this court extends a pergola, wide and high and covered with running roses and vines full of purple clustered grapes. The walls of gray concrete are nearly hidden by Boston ivy.

Everywhere are easy chairs, coolness, greenery, restfulness and comfort and the bloom and fragrance of flowers.

Some of the Features of the Inn.

THE CLOISTER MUSIC ROOM

As we sit in the cool quiet of this spacious and beautiful room we will see many things that show how Mr. Miller has succeeded in reproducing the Mission atmosphere of the Eighteenth Century.

By the way, this is not a chapel, but the Cloister Music Room. There is music here daily at one, five and eight p. m., furnished by the cathedral organ. When the shadows of evening gather, and the lights in this room are turned low, when you can see but faintly the royal banners and escutcheons with their gleaming gold, the colors, mellowed with age, of the ancient paintings, and the glint of war-worn knightly armor that adorns the walls when the rarely beautiful St. Cecilia windows are softly lighted from without and glow with a sort of hidden fire of life—then is the time that one can best feel and appreciate the solemn, many-toned voice of the great organ.

To sit then in one of those stalls of carven oak and hear those rippling whispering, surging tides of harmony as the mighty instrument seems to tell the story of human life—its mystery, its longings, strivings, fears, hopes, desires and disappointments, its laughter and its tears, its tragic mournfulness and its stately, upward-stepping march of pilgrims into the sunlight of celestial fields—that is one of the experiences, never to be forgotten, that make so many people glad that they ever pulled the latch string at the Mission Inn.

The wooden beams overhead are copies of those in the ceiling of the San Miguel Mission, and the minstrels' gallery is copied from the balcony of that same mission.

Of the scenes that project from the walls for are antique originals from Spain. At the rear of the room and on the front supporting columns are two pairs of Seventeenth Century carved silver-gilt pricket candelabra from an ancient Spanish church.

The candelabra on either side of the floor are exact copies of a rare old original from Spain.

The Architecture of the Mission Inn.

It is a good plan to walk around the outside of the Mission Inn, soon after your arrival, and thus get a proper perspective. Then you will see on the East (Orange Street) side reproduced in massive masonry with flying buttresses, the side wall of the San Gabriel Mission.

On the top of each of these great columns is to be a statue of heroic size representing some person connected with the history of the West or with that of the Missions.

Around on the North (Sixth St.,) side you will see the fachada or front of the Santa Barbara Mission, and over the corner of Sixth and Orange the imposing dome of the Carmel Mission.

As you enter the hotel from Seventh Street you pass under the colonnade of arches of the San Fernando and Capistrano Missions and your auto stops almost in front of the campanile of the San Gabriel Mission.

This is to say, the architect, Mr. Arthur B. Benton, and Mr. Miller, have incorporated in this Mission Inn the characteristic features of Mission architecture as found in the principal old missions.

I am indebted to Mr. Miller personally for an auto trip, (his own new Peerless limousine) for a trip through Riverside and vicinity and up Rubidoux mountain.

Rubidoux Mountain named for an early French settler, is seen to the Northwest. It is about 1400 feet above sea level. A safe, well built auto road, known as Huntington Drive, winds about the mountain to the summit.

On the highest part stands a lofty and imposing cross, placed there in memory of Fray Junipero Serra, the Apostle, Legislator and Builder. At the base of the cross is a bronze tablet with appropriate inscription. Not far from the summit, set into the side of an enormous granite boulder is a bas relief in bronze in honor of Padre Serra, that was dedicated by President Taft in 1909.

Each year there is a pilgrimage to the foot of the cross for the celebration of the sunrise Easter service. These services were suggested to Mr. Miller by Jacob Riis a few years ago, and have met with great favor, the attendance being over 10,000 in 1915.

The view from Rubidoux is one of great beauty especially at the hour of sunrise or sunset.

No trip to Los Angeles or to any part of California in fact is complete without a visit to Riverside and Mission Inn.

The Pacific Electric Railway System.

The Pacific Electric makes it possible to see Southern California quickly at minimum cost. The system represents an investment of approximately $75,000,000, and dates its growth in line with the development of Southern California since 1895, its total track in miles at that date being ten and a quarter, whereas today, over 1,100 miles of track is in use extending from Los Angeles for a radius of 75 miles and over which in excess of 3000 trains per day are operated under dispatching orders.

Freight and express service is also operated, serving practically every community in that section.

Located upon its lines are approximately fifty cities and towns, all of them prosperous communities, imbued with civic pride and possessing all of the better elements constituting modern cities. It may be truly said that one may place his finger almost any place and a line of the Pacific Electric Railway is not far distant; almost any time, any auto train of that company will be along in a few minutes.

Stretching from the ocean of the West coast to the mountain tops of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges, one may travel in comfort to points of interest satisfying every taste and desire of the resident or visitor: from beach resorts and cities of the interior valleys, to the mountain tops, one may find pleasant journeys and delightful diversion at small cost.