What is the history of Riverside, California?
Riverside’s central business districtdowntown area is known as the ‘”Mission Inn District”,’ after the Mission Inn, a hotel that was modeled after the Spanish Missions of Californiamissions left along the California coast by Franciscan friars in the 18th century. However, no missionaries of the era actually came as far inland as Riverside. After secularization of the missions, the land was designated Rancho Jurupa and was granted to Juan Bandini, who later divided the rancho into two parts and sold them to two Yankee-turned ranchéros, Benjamin D. “Benito” Wilson and Abel Stearns. The city was founded in the early 1870s beside the Santa Ana River by John W. North, a staunch temperance-minded abolitionist from Tennessee, who had previously founded Northfield, Minnesota. A few years after, the navel orange was planted and found to be such a success that full-scale planting started. Riverside was Temperance movementtemperance minded (few saloons if any were allowed in Riverside proper), an
