Updated: October 14, 2006

rank Augustus Miller, owner of the Mission Inn from 1880 to 1935, created a hotel that showcased his appreciation for California’s missions. Through the Inn, he evoked a romanticized view of the California mission era and an idealized version of California’s history. Miller christened spaces within the Inn the Cloister Walk, the Refectorio, and the Alhambra Courtyard, and he dedicated the Inn’s chapels to Saint Francis, Saint Cecelia, and Santa Clara. He also incorporated reminders and symbols of the missions throughout the hotel, including paintings, tapestries, della Robbia-inspired plaques, and sculptures of saints and angels. Costumed performers - some of Mexican descent – often serenaded hotel guests with the music of the early Californios.

The influence of the missions was so strong that many people assumed the hotel was once among the twenty-one missions dotting the California coastline. Indeed, Frank Miller was known to dress in a Catholic padre's cowl on occasion, conveying a vision of serenity, hospitality, and spirituality. The Mission Inn, however, was never part of Father Serra’s chain of missions and asistencias, nor did any nuns or priests reside at the Inn or regularly perform services there.

Among the enthusiastic supporters of the Mission Inn was Miller’s friend Elbert Hubbard, a writer, furniture maker, and founder of the Roycroft Colony in East Aurora, New York. Hubbard reinforced the myth of a mission on the hotel site when he wrote:

This hotel is built and furnished after the general style of the missions. Its mission to serve mankind and benefit humanity. . . One man’s spirit seems to run through the place – that of Frank A. Miller . . . fit successor to the men of God who looked after the mission that once stood on this same spot (Hubbard, 1907).

In 1932, Miller dedicated the Inn’s largest chapel, with the gold Rayas Altar and Louis Comfort Tiffany windows, to Saint Francis of Assisi. Imagery of St. Francis and Father Junipero Serra appeared throughout the hotel. The Mission Inn's shield-like escutcheon, designed by artist William Alexander Sharp, welcomed guests with the following: ENTRE, ES SU CASA, AMIGO ("Enter, this is your home, friend").

The Miller family’s passion for collecting reinforced the mission theme. The bell came to serve as an overriding symbol for the Inn. Over several decades, Miller and his family acquired in excess of eight hundred bells; today, there are approximately five hundred remaining in the collection. In 1908, Frank Miller copyrighted the “Raincross” symbol, complete with a bell at the center. Early Inn publications reported that Miller adopted the double-barred cross from the Native American people of the Southwest, but that origin has since been questioned (Hodgen, 2005). The bell imagery in the Raincross design certainly reflects a Mission-style influence. This symbol now appears throughout Riverside – from streetlights to jewelry, to city and county seals, and on concrete retaining walls lining Interstate 91. In addition to the city-wide use of the Raincross symbol, the mission theme is expressed in other ways. For example, a cross and plaque commemorating Father Junipero Serra was dedicatd by President William Howard Taft and can be found at the top of Mount Rubidoux, to the west of downtown Riverside.

Frank Miller was not alone in his fascination with the California missions. Many artists of the 18 th, 19 th, and 20 th centuries depicted the missions in their paintings, including Englishman Edwin Deakin (1838-1923), Henry Chapman Ford (1828-1894), and Alexander Harmer (1856-1925). Together with early photographs, their artworks serve as important historical records, as many missions subsequently fell into disrepair and neglect. Miller acquired thirty-six of Ford’s mission paintings, and exhibited them in an area of the hotel he called El Camino Real (the Royal Highway), named after the trail that connects the twenty-one California missions.

In 1895, Charles Fletcher Lummis-a newspaperman, librarian, editor of Land of Sunshine (later Out West), photographer, founder of the Southwest Museum, and friend of Miller-established The Landmarks Club of Los Angeles, which worked to preserve some of the California Missions. The club counted Mission Inn architect Arthur Benton, railroad tycoon Henry Huntington, and Frank Miller among its members (Benton, 1908).

The Landmarks Club’s earliest efforts included stabilization work at Mission San Juan Capistrano and Mission San Fernando Rey de España, two missions which inspired the architectural design of the Mission Inn (Lummis, 1903). In his poetic book about the Mission Inn, Benton mentions his own familiarity with the chain of missions, and notes that architectural features of the Capistrano, San Luis Rey, San Gabriel, Pala, and San Fernando Missions were all incorporated into the Inn (Benton, 1908). Some elements of the Mission Inn are also reminiscent of structures found at the San Diego and Santa Barbara Missions: the Moorish flavor of the Carmel Mission towers is echoed at the Inn, as well (Johnson, 1964).

Coinciding with such public fascination for Mission-style architecture was an interest in the plight of the mission Indians. In her romantic novel, Ramona (1884), and her earlier book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), author Helen Hunt Jackson expressed her concern for California’s Native Americans. Since 1923, a yearly outdoor pageant in Hemet, California, has retold the tragic story of Ramona. Ramona also became part of the Mission Inn; the Ramona Dome, adjacent to the Cloister Music Room of the hotel, features a series of windows depicting Ramona and her lover Alessandro in stained glass.

Another pageant of the period, The Mission Play, told the story of California’s early history. Authored by California’s Poet Laureate and politician John Steven McGroarty, the play was staged adjacent to Mission San Gabriel Archángel for twenty years. McGroarty credited Frank Miller with the idea for the play.

Over the years, Frank Miller and others, including Elbert Hubbard, continued to portray the Mission Inn in the context of the California missions. Hubbard wrote:

(Miller) has absorbed the spirit of the old-time Mission Fathers. . .(Hubbard, 1909).

and

The Mission Inn is different from anything in America, or anything on
earth, as far as that is concerned. It has a distinct, peculiar atmosphere. It
is the old-time Mission Inn, with the quiet rest and silence, broken only
by the chiming bells that record the hours and call men to prayer. .. (Hubbard, 1912).

It is fitting that a bell hangs from a curved metal pipe support near Frank Miller’s personal suite of rooms at the front of the hotel, similar to markers placed along El Camino Real and at the California missions, themselves. Just as the missions inspired Frank Miller's imagination, his Mission Inn continues to inspire the imagination of all who visit.

Enter California Missions
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• Days of Peace and Rest at The Glenwood By Those Who Know. (1908). East Aurora, N.Y.: The Roycrofters.
• Benton, Arthur Burnett, with sketches by Wm. Alexander Sharp. (1908). The Mission Inn. Los Angeles: Segnogram Pub. Co.
• Benton, Arthur Burnett. (1911) “The California Mission and Its Influence upon Pacific Coast Architecture.” The West Coast Magazine Vol. LX, No. 2 (May, 1911): 136 – 160.
• Hodgen, Maurice. (2005). “The Romance of the Rain Cross.” Journal of the Riverside Historical Society No. 9 (Feb. 2005): 17-33.
• Hubbard, Elbert. (1912). Music at Meals.
• Hubbard, Elbert. (1909). "The Mission Inn – An Ad." The Fra, December.
• Johnson, Paul, ed. (1993). The California Missions: A Pictorial History. Menlo Park, CA: Sunset Books-Lane Book Company, 1964. 7 th printing, 1993.
• Lummis, Charles F. (1903). “Thus Far—And Much Farther, summary of the work of the Landmarks Club.” Out West Vol. XIX,.
• Walker, (1987). "A Literary History of Southern California." John Steven McGroarty: A Remembrance. Ed. Charlotte McHale Montgomery. Riverside, CA: Riverside Public Library.
• Zentmyer, G.A., ed. (1972). The Lighted Cross: The First 100 Years of Riverside’s First Church 1872-1972 . Riverside, CA: First Congregational Church.