Hotel Cabrillo’s place as one of La Jolla’s longest-standing hotels is debatable (the hotel itself doesn’t exist but the building does – as a hotel) in historical circles but you will likely recognize it today nonetheless, despite the change in signage.

The first photo, taken around 1915, shows people in and around a McKeen Motor Car, a gas train built in Omaha, Neb.

The train sits in front of the Hotel Cabrillo, which was built in 1908 and 1909 after investor James Wilson, and contractor Perl Acton partnered to provide a much-needed hotel for the burgeoning Village, according to Patricia Schaelchlin in her book “Inside La Jolla.”

Wilson is pictured in the train’s third porthole window from the left. 

Originally named the “Wilson-Acton Hotel,” the building was considered a “monstrosity” by many, Schaechlin wrote, as it was larger than any building since the La Jolla Park Hotel, which burned down in 1896.

The $25,000 hotel, designed by Irving Gill, featured 46 guest rooms as well as parlors, a dining room, roof garden and more.

Construction involved using much of the lumber from a dancing pavilion that once stood in Scripps Park but was taken down in 1907, according to Howard Randolph’s book “La Jolla Year by Year.”

Upon Hotel Cabrillo’s grand opening in June 1909, it “immediately became successful,” Schaelchlin wrote; the hotel came to be known as the “Hotel of Pleasant Memories.”

Hotel Cabrillo changed ownership twice before being incorporated by La Valencia Hotel, another longstanding hotel with its own illustrious place in La Jolla history, in 1956; the structure is now known as La Valencia’s “West Wing,” according to Historical Hotels of America.

Click here to read more about La Jolla’s historical hotels. 

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