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“Remembering the Adobe Hotel”
by Al Gartner
On a commanding hill overlooking Twentynine Palms sits the El Adobe Hotel, once simply called The Adobe. The twelve-room adobe structure was built by Jack McClane and Ed White in 1935 on their 320-acre hilltop tract.
In 1937, the exclusive resort and ten acres of ground were sold to Albert Miller of Riverside and Colonel H.L. Watson of Twentynine Palms in a deal brokered by well-known real estate developer E.H. Nichols.
The Watson/Miller connection came about when Albert Miller was managing the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone National Park, a grand old hotel that is still in use today. While there, his niece, Helen Hutchings, met and
married Colonel Watson’s eldest son, Spec. Albert Miller’s uncle was Frank Miller, owner of the world famous Mission Inn in Riverside, California, whose sister, Alice Richardson was its manager. She, along
with Nellie Coffman, owner of the renowned Desert Inn in Palm Springs, encouraged Albert Miller to purchase the Adobe Hotel. They were among those who believed Twentynine Palms would prosper as a desert resort.
In October, 1937 the Millers came to Twentynine Palms. Accompanying her parents was Anne, who was one of the fourteen entering freshman at the new Twentynine Palms High School--a building that was divided into three
rooms with sliding partitions. Ted Hayes was principal and counselor, as well as teacher of History and Literature. Miss Burr taught Spanish while Miss Barnes instructed in Math and Science. Anne and
Elizabeth (Ibby) Watson, daughter of Colonel Watson, became best friends. Anne remembers the Adobe hotel well, as it was her home during the four years she attended Twentynine Palms High, a time she recalls fondly.
“Guests did not come to be entertained but to rest from their lives in busy cities. A high point of the day might be a picnic in a nearby canyon, a hike in the Joshua Tree Monument or a horseback ride through
creosote bushes and sandy washes. On chilly desert nights guests gathered around our fireplace after dinner. Some might stir up a game of bridge or Michigan. Others read for a while before walking to their snug
rooms along sandy paths bordered with native plants and cacti beneath the sparkling star-lit sky.
"The fireplace was the heart of our small lobby, with three large wooden-armed couches forming a U in front of it. Father bought ironwood and mesquite from a Morongo Valley Indian who hauled it from Mount San
Gorgonio. The wood was tough, having fought for survival in a harsh land, and burned slowly and steadily. We often sprinkled magic salts on the logs to produce brilliant flames of violet, green, and phosphorescent
blue. With nothing more urgent upon which to focus, everyone oohed and aahed as for a fireworks display. A simple memorable moment on a quiet night …
"During the Christmas holidays, mother decorated the fireplace mantle with branches of spiny, silver Smoke Tree, which grew in the dry washes near the hotel. She placed the stalks in sand-filled pots and struck
frosty multi-colored gum drops on all the spines … Before dinner on Sundays, guests who were staying longer than a weekend, gathered around the radio with its dilating green eye, to listen to Jack Benny, Fred Allen,
and Edgar Bergan. The scenes we imagined were more vivid than any movie. Listening to H.V. Kaltenborn, the conservative voice of authority on the world situation, was a nightly ritual . . . I took pleasure in going
to bed early. In the wonderful privacy of my own small room I could snuggle down beneath wool blankets on a chilly desert night and listen to ‘I Love a Mystery.’ The sound surged and faded on the distant Los Angeles
station, announced in those days as KFI . . . ”
Twentynine Palms in the late 1930’s was a sleepy desert town. Bagley’s new market was at the Plaza where everything from soup to dynamite and most everything in between could be bought. It also housed the Post Office
and library. Graham’s restaurant next door was advertising dinners from 50 cents to a dollar, while you could get a Sunday chicken dinner at the Mission Inn for 75 cents. “Doc” Pomeroy had the drug store in town,
Kenney’s was to come in 1940, its soda fountain a meeting place for the high school kids. Gas was 19 cents a gallon, which seems cheap today but these were depression years. Major Huber owned the Joshua Tree Cafe
& Barn at the Four Corners with good food and dancing rivaled only by Jimmy William’s Smoke Tree Broiler. Derald Martin was running his Sunset Photo Service out of his Dad’s 29 Palms Garage at the Plaza, and the
Twentynine Palms Inn was advertising a single room for $6.00. The military was not to arrive until January 1942, in the early days of World War II, with the establishment of Condor Field on what is now the Marine
Corps Air Ground Combat Center.
In 1941, the Adobe dining room was enlarged and four new bedrooms were added by contractor Walt Berg. Rates were from $7.00 single to $12.00 double, American Plan. The most famous guest Anne remembers in her four
years there was Bernt Balchen, the well-known aviator who was chief pilot on Admiral Richard Byrd’s first flight over the South Pole in 1929. Long time resident, artist and teacher Don Malone remembers the hotel as
a class place with its thick adobe walls and deeply set windows, which commanded the best view in town. Alan Bagley, son of Pioneer homesteaders Frank and Helen Bagley, remembers the hotel had a nine-hole golf
course. A local joke said “traps full of grass, everything else sand.”
The hotel was used for exclusive social affairs and was considered the best place in town. In October 1944 it was restricted for use by U.S. Naval officers and their families attached to the Twentynine Palms Naval
Auxiliary Air Station at Condor Field. The dining room was only for Navy personnel and their guests. This lasted until April 20, 1945, when an ad in The Desert Trail stated:
Adobe Hotel
Open to The Public
Bar-Dining Room
Home Cooked Meals...Cool Salads
Homemade Pies
Dinners 85c to $1.50
In November 1946, Mr. & Mrs. Leonard Wikoff purchased the hotel and forty acres surrounding it from the Faries Estate. A Barbecue Pit was added and the “Maverick” dining room and cocktail lounge was redecorated
in a South Seas style. The Wikoff’s had installed the first generating plant in 1937 at the Four Corners, which supplied electricity to the fledging community.
In 1953, the hotel was advertised as “El Adobe Luxurious Hotel” in the Progress addition of The Desert Trail with maitre d’hotel Wade Taylor overseeing the Maverick Room. A 20-foot wide by 40-foot long pool was added with mineral water supplied from a well on the premises and a uniform temperature of 118 degrees.
As Anne Miller Johnson writes: “[Thomas] Wolfe was right, you can’t go home. The building I called home is still there but the essence of the place no longer exists except in my memory.” The old hotel has gone
through numerous owners over the years and is now sub-divided into apartments, its pool filled in, its illustrious guests long departed. Peacocks now roam the once well-tended grounds and only memories remain.
Special thanks to Anne Beckwith Miller-Johnson for her reminiscences and from whose work Twentynine Palms Memories quotes have been taken.
Writer Al Gartner, resident of the Wonder Valley area of 29 Palms, is a local historian and board member of the 29 Palms Historical Society. He frequently contributes historical featuers to The Sun Runner.
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