Presidents, Activists, Celebrities… Oh My! Movers and Shakers at Riverside’s Mission Inn

1. Presidents, Activists, Celebrities… Oh My! Movers and Shakers at Riverside’s Mission Inn

2. When the Mission Inn first opened in 1885, it was known as the Glenwood Hotel. It became the Mission Inn in 1903. Throughout the more than 100 year history of the hotel, many famous guests called the hotel home during visits to Riverside.

3. President Roosevelt replanting one of Riverside’s Naval Orange trees in 1903.

4. President William Howard Taft and his chair. The “Taft Chair” is still on display in the Mission Inn lobby.

5. John F Kennedy attended a Peace Conference at the Mission Inn in 1940 while he was a college student.

6. Richard and Patricia Nixon were married in the Presidential lounge in 1940. Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent their honeymoon at the Inn in 1952.

7. Famous scientists and inventors like Albert Einstein and Henry Ford visited the hotel in the early 1900s.

8. Social reformers like Booker T. Washington and Susan B. Anthony visited the hotel in its early years. Booker T. Washington stayed at the Mission Inn in 1914. Susan B. Anthony stayed at the hotel in 1895 when it was still called the Glenwood Hotel.

9. Many more notable figures including John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, and Helen Keller, a political activist and disabilities advocate, have also visited the hotel.