I thought it might be interesting to learn about some of the historic places featured in Silver Harvest.
The story’s backdrop is late 19-century San Luis Obispo, about 40 years after the townscape emerged along two main “streets” that formed an intersection near Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa: A dusty trail known as Monterey Street ran northeast from San Luis Obispo toward Cuesta Pass (where heroine Nicola Antelini was robbed on the stagecoach) and the distant city of Monterey, while Chorro Street (Nicola’s regular route home to Bertha’s brothel and Madam Ava’s parlor house) ran northwest through the Chorro Valley to the small settlements of Morro Bay and Cayucos along the coast.
When Nicola arrived in San Luis Obispo in October 1893, the county’s population was about 16,000 and the city’s business district comprised a fifteen-block area. Commercial buildings with distinctive architectural designs intermingled with private homes, and many residents lived in hotels and on the upper floors of retail shops and offices. Most structures were wooden, and a few were constructed of locally manufactured brick. The remainder were aging adobes, many with false wooden fronts and some with tin, iron, or galvanized metal roofs.
In Chapter 5, Nicola stepped off the stagecoach and onto the grounds of the grand Ramona Hotel, the city’s first true luxury hotel, built in anticipation of the influx of wealthy travelers that the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad would bring. The hotel’s name was chosen as a tribute to a popular novel of the time, Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson. The Ramona Hotel occupied the entire block bounded by Marsh, Johnson, Higuera, and Pepper Streets. The city’s reigning social center opened in October 1888 and stood four stories high. The wooden Victorian hotel attracted visitors nationwide, as well as affluent local residents, all of whom enjoyed the Ramona’s multi-course meals, elegant tea parties, and, on special occasions, formal balls. Guests arrived by horse, buggy, and stagecoach (like Nicola) and beginning in 1894, by train. Around 1900, many guests began coming to the Ramona Hotel by automobile.
Two hundred rooms and suites awaited guests eager to be pampered with modern amenities like hot and cold running water, gas and electric lights, and electric “call-and-return” bells that summoned the hotel’s many servants. Multi-room suites had dumbwaiters for room service. Overnight accommodations cost $2 to $3.50 a day (more than the $1 Nicola had), and included breakfast, supper, and dinner.
On May 5, 1894 (seven months after Nicola’s arrival), the Southern Pacific Railroad reached San Luis Obispo via the Ramona Depot that was build adjacent to the Ramona Hotel. In later years, the depot welcomed two U.S. presidents when they visited San Luis Obispo: William McKinley in 1901 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. The depot was later moved to the grounds of the Dallidet Adobe on Pacific Street (where Nicola met Pierre Dallidet and sampled wine in his cellar) and was restored in the 1960s. The Ramona Hotel burned down to the ground in 1905 and was never rebuilt.
Pictures of the historic Ramona Hotel and Train Depot and the Dallidet Adobe can be seen in: San Luis Obispo: A History in Architecture by Janet Penn
Ramona Hotel and Train Depot — pages 109 – 111
Dallidet Adobe — page 88
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