The Hotel Del Coronado is a wooden Victorian style hotel. It is located on Coronado or Coronado Island and it is the reason Coronado exists. Coronado is actually not an island but a pennisula. It is 32.7 square miles of land and 24.7 square miles of water. Its population is 24,697 with a median income of $91,748 and a median age of 34. Coronado, in Spanish, means "the crowned one". Coronado was once nothing but sand and jack rabbits. It was a desert surrounded by salt water and no fresh water to be found. It also did not have one single tree on it. In the 1880's when San Diego had a huge population growth Millianaires Elisha Babcock, Hampton Story and Jacob Gruendike were rabbit hunting on Coronado and decided to buy the property and build a resort. They purchased Coronado for $110,000 and began clearing some obsticles so that the resort could be built. Some of the obsticles were no trees, no fresh water, lots of rabbits (10,000 to 1 ration rabbits to humans) and lack of laborers. Contracts were set up with several timber companies for the lumber, laborers were mostly chinese from San Francisco, a pipeline was run under the San Diego bay for fresh water and the rabbits were continuously dealt with. In 1886 construction began and the Hotel Del Coronado was opened in 1888. At that time is was the largerst resort hotel in the World. It is still one of the few surviving examples of the wooden Victorian beach resort and one of the oldest and largest wooden structures in California. The Hotel Del Coronado is also referred to as "The Del" or "Hotel Del". It was the first hotel to use electricity. Money was running low at the opening of the hotel so sugar magnate John Spreckles purchased the hotel. He did remodel the Hotel and everyone thought he was absolutely nuts because was giving up 40 rooms. The reason he was losing so many rooms is because he had this stupid idea of putting bathrooms in every hotel room. During the renovation do put the bathrooms in luxery tents were set up on the beach. Guests loved the idea of "camping in luxery" on the beach and even after the renovations were concluded tents contiunued to be rented until 1939. Once the rooms all had their own personal bathrooms rates for the rooms did go up to $2.50 a day. Today's current rate for the least expensive room for one night is $299.99.
There have been many owners of the Hotel Del and with each owner one thing stayed true and that was the historic look of the hotel. During WW II the miliary would normally have taken over the hotel due to its location but decided to leave it as a resort so it could play host to the families of military officers. It was established as the place to stay and many Presidents have stayed at the Hotel Del: Presidents Harrison, McKinley, Taft, Wilson and FDR have all stayed there along with every President since Eisenhower. In the 1920's it became the place for the Hollywood Stars to come stay and play. Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino were among the few. Many notable people have also stayed at the Hotel such as Thomas Edison, L Frank Baum (Wizard of Oz was written during his stay), and Babe Ruth. There have been several movies filmed at the Hotel Del but the most notable was "Some Like It Hot" starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.
Today the Hotel Del Coronado is still a luxery beach resort that is still very popular. There have been new buildings added to the Hotel, as recently as 2005, but are built to match the Historic part of the Hotel. It has a beautiful beach and pool area with lots of restaurants and shops. My Mom, Pam and I ate at the Patio Restaurant for lunch. The food was good but the atomsphere was better. The sun, ocean breezes and live entertainment made it feel like we were on vacation. It is a beautiful hotel that is worth visiting. When Tim and I lived in the area we use to visit the Hotel just to walk around and check it out. It was also a place we took visitors too.
Tomorrow we will be hitting the road and heading northwest to Menifee, CA. We will be staying at a Thousand Trails campground there for two weeks. Menfiee is about 50 miles away from Oceanside, CA.
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