Photograph of people loaded in an open wagon with a three-horse team in front of the Occidental Hotel on Main Street in Mendocino. Other people are on the porch and balcony of the hotel. The hotel’s livery stable is on the left, and its water tower and windmill are behind the structures. The steeple of the Mendocino Presbyterian church is visible on the far left.
The Occidental Hotel began as Norton’s Hotel, built in 1882 by William Norton who had prospered in previous hotel and real estate investments. It was located at the junction of Lansing and Main Street in Mendocino. Just before he died in 1887, Norton sold the hotel to the Kiser Brothers, who changed the name to the Occidental Hotel. It was bought in 1892 by Frank and Kate Gorman. When Frank died suddenly of spinal meningitis in 1894, Kate carried on alone. The hotel burned to the ground in 1941 and was never rebuilt or replaced.
The date range of the photograph is based on the Kiser Brothers changing the name of the hotel from Norton Hotel to The Occidental in 1887, and the destruction by fire of the livery stable in 1899.
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