C. C. Miller

C C Miller

Miller and his wife, Mary Clark Miller, had met in Ohio, as students of Oberlin College. They had four children. Emma, the oldest, married G. O. Newman in 1876. Frank, who became the master of the Mission Inn, was 17 when the family arrived in Riverside.

Miller became involved in the conflict between land developer, S. C. Evans, and John Wesley North, the head of the Southern California Colony Association, the group that first settled Riverside. Evans had hired Miller to engineer a canal that would allow him to supply water to a large tract of land he owned, making it feasible to sell the land. The cost estimates relied on the Colony Association to give Evans a right-of-way. North refused and by trading shares in his own development for Colony Association shares, Evans managed to take over.

On January 23, 1877, the Southern California Colony Association, now under Evans, sold Miller and Newman the block where the Mission Inn now sits for $250. The home they built, called Glenwood Cottage, grew to take in paying guests. In 1878, they built a large addition and the building became the Glenwood Hotel. On February 4, 1880, C. C. Miller and his wife, Mary, sold the Glenwood property to their son, Frank, for $5,000. Later, in 1885, Miller became the engineer on Riverside’s largest water project, the Gage Canal.