On San Jacinto’s Main Street once stood a hotel which, at various times, was called the Lockwood House, Pioneer Hotel or Virginia Lee Hotel. It was a quaint and unassuming building that had a long history and, unfortunately, a not-so-glorious end. In 1883, San Jacinto resident Tom Lockwood constructed and opened the small hotel on the south side of Main Street between Sheriff and Jordan streets. Called the Lockwood House, the hotel only had about a dozen rooms, but given San Jacinto’s population at the time, that was probably all that was needed. Tom and his wife Lorinda ran the hotel for a while. However, Tom died in 1893. Lorinda continued to run the hotel until she died in 1911. With the passing of Lorinda Lockwood, ownership passed to their granddaughter, Lela Lockwood Noble. By 1911, their sole child Charles had already died, leaving three children, of which Lela was the oldest. Charles is best known in San Jacinto history as one of the major players in the town of Kenworthy up in the San Jacinto Mountains. Lela Noble took up the cause and ran the Lockwood House for many years. She was the defining force behind it, and luckily there are reminiscences of hers printed in the newspapers and also in the collections of the San Jacinto Museum that shed light on those interesting times in San Jacinto. Lela was only 17 when she took over running the Lockwood House. She would run it until 1947, when she sold it out of the Lockwood family for the first time in more than 60 years. During her tenure, a number of improvements were made, and the lot just to the west of the hotel lot was purchased for a garden. Much of that garden area was designed and improved by Ken Kreigh, the well-known rock sculptor of the area, about whom I did an article several years ago. After the sale by Lela in 1947, the hotel went through a number of owners, some for as short a time as one year. In 1955, it was sold to Ellen Sherwood. It is she who renamed the hotel to the Pioneer Hotel, which the building was known as for about 20 years or so. It remained a small and quaint but aging hotel throughout these years. Related Articles Local News | How two peaks in the San Jacinto Mountains came to be named after women Local News | How Serfas Club Drive in Corona got its name Local News | Who were the Comstocks and what role did they have in Riverside County history? Local News | Water Buffalo monument at Lake Evans in Riverside is turning 75 Local News | Riverside mayor tried to take a vacation in 1907, but city business called Big changes came in 1976, when the building was sold to Al and Virginia Thompson. They remade the hotel into more of what we would consider a boutique hotel, and changed the name once again, this time to Virginia Lee. Unfortunately, despite having withstood the two major earthquakes in the San Jacinto Valley in 1899 and 1918, the building was severely damaged in the flooding of 1980. The building sat empty for years afterward, until it was acquired by the city of San Jacinto. It was the city’s decision to tear down the historic building, which happened about 10 years ago, thus removing San Jacinto’s oldest commercial building. If you have an idea for a future Back in the Day column about a local historic person, place or event, contact Steve Lech and Kim Jarrell Johnson at [email protected].