Review: The Mission Inn Riverside, California

We stayed at the craziest hotel, and can't wait to go back!

By David Yates Posted in Learn on 06/05/2026 15 min read

My daughter Katie turned 30 in March. She lives in the LA area with her wife, Erika, and Katie had no idea we were coming to celebrate with her.

The plan: fly into Ontario International Airport (our favorite LA-area airport) on Saturday afternoon, pick up a convertible from Avis, check into a hotel in Riverside, then wake up on Sunday and pull off a surprise. Amy had coordinated matching flowers and a small cake with the local Vons grocery store. Top down on the freeway to Pasadena. Walk into Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery like we just happened to be in the neighborhood. Watch Katie’s face.

The hotel was almost an afterthought in that plan, but it turned out to be a part I can’t stop thinking about.

The Mission Inn: What You’re Walking Into

The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in Riverside, California, is a National Historic Landmark that occupies an entire city block in downtown Riverside. It is the largest Mission Revival Style building in the United States. It has 238 guest rooms, and no two are alike. It contains over 6,000 pieces of art collected from around the world. The oldest bell in Christendom, cast in 1247, hangs in one of its towers.

It is also, somehow, a functioning hotel where you can order room service.

Frank Augustus Miller took over the original 12-room adobe boarding house in 1880 and spent the next 55 years building outward and upward, pulling architectural inspiration from California missions, European castles, Spanish Gothic cathedrals, and Moorish palaces. Four wings materialized over the decades: the Mission, the Cloister, the Spanish, and the Rotunda. Soaring domes. Arcaded corridors. Walking through the hotel feels like you’re in the middle of a Tim Curry movie, with courtyards you find by accident and staircases that lead somewhere unexpected. When Miller died in 1935, he left behind something that cannot be categorized.

The Presidential History Is Not Marketing Copy

Richard Nixon married Pat Ryan here on June 21, 1940, in what was then the Presidential Suite, the room that became a cocktail lounge in 1957, after the teetotaling Frank Miller had been dead long enough for someone to finally install a bar. Ronald Reagan honeymooned here with Nancy in 1952. Theodore Roosevelt stayed in 1903 and ceremonially transplanted one of California’s two original parent navel orange trees in the courtyard. William Howard Taft attended a banquet in 1909, and the hotel had a custom chair built to hold his 335 pounds. It still sits near the presidential portrait gallery, available for the inevitable photo.

John F. Kennedy was here too, in 1940, as a graduate student attending the Institute of World Affairs. He would return as president. The hotel has a plaque on the wall that lists him in 1940, the same year Nixon got married down the hall.

Twelve presidents in total. I don’t know of another private hotel outside Washington that can count 12 presidents among its guests. If one exists, I haven’t found it. The portraits line the walls near the Presidential Lounge.

Amelia Earhart visited in 1936 (and was photographed with DeWitt Hutchings, Frank Miller’s son-in-law), and not only held her wings at the Aviation Wall ceremony but also held the hotel’s parrots. The Aviation Wall is a gated row of copper wings signed by legends of flight that still stands in the hotel today, 151 aviators strong. The hotel named a cocktail after her: the Queen of the Air. Albert Einstein slept here, and one of the hotel’s resident macaws bit him on the way in. The macaws have been stationed at the hotel entrance since its earliest days. John Muir visited. Henry Ford. Andrew Carnegie. Booker T. Washington lectured in the Cloister Music Room in 1914. Sweden’s Crown Prince attended a banquet. Japan’s Prince visited.

The Man Who Saved It

When Miller died in 1935, the hotel began a slow decline. By 1976, it had deteriorated far enough that it sold at foreclosure for $2.4 million. It was converted to apartments. Three hundred UC Riverside students were housed in its rooms at one point. The Mission Wing became 137 apartments. It was back on the market again in 1990.

Duane Roberts, a Riverside businessman who had made his first fortune by inventing the frozen burrito at 19, bought it on December 24, 1992, and reopened it six days later. He committed to a $55 million restoration (equivalent in purchasing power to about $130 million today) and spent the next three decades rebuilding the hotel in line with Miller’s vision. He started the Festival of Lights in 1993, the first year he owned it. It has run every November and December since, and is now one of the largest holiday light displays in the country.

Duane Roberts died on November 1, 2025, just days away from his 89th birthday. We stayed at the Mission Inn four months later without knowing he had passed until the staff told us. Two months after we checked out, the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation (formerly known as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians) announced a deal to purchase the property.

When we walked the halls on a Saturday night in March, we were walking through the final chapter of a 33-year stewardship that saved a building that had been almost torn down to make way for a parking lot.

How the Trip Came Together And What It Cost

Our Frontier flight, F9 4689, was scheduled to depart DFW at 4:08 PM CST on Saturday, March 7, and land in Ontario at 5:39 PM PST. We were still at the gate at 7:19 PM. The delay took about three hours of what should have been hotel time. Side note: Because of the delay, one of the benefits of my US Bank Altitude Connect card (one of the best travel cards no one talks about) kicked in – free lounge access… and by that I mean the ability to use our vouchers at a restaurant if we chose to.

We picked up the Mustang 5.0 convertible from our reserved parking space in the Avis section at the Ontario airport and drove to Riverside with the top down. It’s easy to love mid-March in the Inland Empire. A clear sky, temperatures in the mid-60s, the kind of evening that makes a convertible feel mandatory.

We pulled up to the Mission Inn sometime after 8 PM. Downtown Riverside on a Saturday night has more going on than you’d expect: people walking, craft breweries lit up, boba shops with lines out the door. It feels like a college town because it is one. UC Riverside sits three miles east of downtown, and 15 other schools are located in the city. That explained the foot traffic. It did not explain the building in front of us, which occupies an entire city block and looks as if someone imported a Spanish castle and forgot to tell the neighborhood.

We valet parked and walked up to the entrance, and the front courtyard stopped us cold. Wow.

We had a courtyard view room. No two rooms at the Mission Inn are identical, and ours had the kind of architectural details that take a second to register: the molding, the tile work, the weight of the furniture. It did not feel like a hotel room. It felt like a room that had existed for a long time and had graciously agreed to let us sleep in it.

We were in room 336, on the third floor, with a courtyard view. I have no idea who slept there before us. At the Mission Inn, that feels like the wrong thing to say. Whatever the answer is, it would probably be more interesting than I expect.

The Restaurants

The Mission Inn has five places to eat and two bars inside its walls, which sounds excessive until you remember it occupies an entire city block. The steakhouse, now called The Steakhouse at the Mission Inn and formerly named Duane’s Prime Steaks & Seafood after its owner, has held its AAA Four Diamond rating since 1996. That’s independent of the hotel’s Four Diamond designation, and it puts the restaurant in the top 2.5% of all AAA-approved restaurants nationwide. USDA Prime beef, an enforced dress code, and a Teddy Roosevelt painting nearly eight feet tall dominating the dining room wall. We didn’t eat there on this trip.

The Mission Inn Restaurant handles the main dining room and the Sunday brunch buffet, including a champagne and mimosa bar. Bella Trattoria is the sidewalk Italian bistro: brick-oven pizza and pasta, born from the Roberts’ travels through Italy. The Presidential Lounge is where you get a drink in the room where Nixon got married, with live jazz playing, and the presidential portrait gallery watching you from the walls. None of those three carry an independent diamond rating. The steakhouse is the one to book if you’re making a night of it. The California Lounge is a more casual venue.

We ate at Las Campanas, the outdoor Mexican restaurant, in the front courtyard on Saturday night. Our server was Karina. Amy had the Cactus Rose Margarita ($22) and the Chicken El Pastor Tacos ($21). I had the Wet Burrito Verde ($27) and a Pepsi. Total with tax and tip came to $96.48, charged to room 336.

The orange tree in the courtyard has a story. In May 1903, Theodore Roosevelt ceremonially transplanted one of Riverside’s two original “parent” navel orange trees into the Mission Inn’s courtyard. These were the Washington navel orange trees introduced to California from Brazil in 1873, the trees that launched the entire Southern California citrus industry. Because navel oranges are seedless, they cannot reproduce from seed and must be propagated from cuttings. Which means every Washington navel orange tree alive today is a genetic clone of that original mother tree. Every navel orange you have ever eaten came from a tree that traces back to Riverside.

Frank Miller orchestrated the planting as a civic statement: a sitting president, a historic hotel, and the tree that made Riverside rich, all in the same courtyard. Miller sent baskets of oranges harvested from it to Roosevelt every year until Roosevelt died in 1919.

The original tree died of fungal root rot in 1922. What stands in the courtyard today is a direct descendant.

Elsewhere in the hotel, in a different courtyard, is the animated clock that Allis Miller Hutchings designed in 1952, the year she died. She was Frank Miller’s daughter, the woman who kept this place running after her father built it. The clock has life-sized revolving figures: a California Indian, Father Serra, Juan Bautista de Anza, and a bear. It has been running for 73 years. The plaque on the wall next to it has her name.

How Big Is This Place

While we were there, a wedding was happening somewhere in the building. A medical school class reunion was happening somewhere else. A conference was running in a third wing. As far as I could tell, none of those three groups ever crossed paths with each other or with the regular hotel guests. The Mission Inn is large enough to absorb all of it without anyone noticing.

The wedding makes even more sense once you know the building. There are two chapels inside it. The St. Francis of Assisi Chapel seats 150, is nondenominational, with seven Tiffany stained-glass windows and an 18-karat gold altar from 18th-century Mexico. The St. Cecilia Chapel seats 10, with a carved gilt altar from 1740, tucked beside the Atrio Courtyard for the couple that wants something closer to a private ceremony. It is the only hotel chapel in the region. Bette Davis got married here. Nixon got married here. The hotel says nearly every Riverside native has a memory of a Mission Inn wedding. Some couple on our Saturday night was creating one of those memories somewhere in the building. We never saw them.

In the lobby, there is a bronze statue of Duane Roberts, the man who saved the place. He stands tall, commanding, the kind of larger-than-life figure the pose implies. Our server leaned in at one point and mentioned, in a tone that suggested she had been waiting for the right moment to share this, that the statue had given him a few extra inches.

I appreciated that. It felt like the right thing to say about a man who built something this big.

Sunday: The Birthday

Checkout was at 11:00 AM. We loaded the Mustang, stopped at Vons to pick up the matching birthday cake and flowers, then pointed the car toward Pasadena with the top down.

Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery sits on Green St. in Old Town Pasadena inside a converted horse stable, complete with exposed wooden rafters, an open hearth loaded with sizzling meats, and a full cheesery up front where you can buy cheese and charcuterie on the way in or out. The brunch menu is creative and expensive, the atmosphere is warm, and the back patio is the kind of place you’d choose for a birthday without being asked.

Katie had no idea. Amy walked in while I parked the car. Surprise ensued.

After brunch, we went to their house, stayed a few hours, then drove back to Ontario. We dropped off the car, took the shuttle back to the terminal, used Clear+Precheck to speed through security, and headed to the Aspire Lounge. We were denied entry as China Airlines had reserved the entire lounge for an incoming flight. That was a first for me.

Frontier F9 2924 pushed back at 8:44 PM, more than 90 minutes late. We landed at DFW at 1:38 AM on Monday morning.

Should You Stay Here?

Yes, with one piece of advice.

The Mission Inn is not a luxury hotel in the modern sense; it is a historic landmark that functions as one. The rooms are beautiful but idiosyncratic. The experience of the property is the point, not amenity checkboxes. If you need a pool bar and a modern fitness center, stay elsewhere. If you want to sleep in a building where Nixon married his wife and walk to the bar where Roosevelt once held court, this is the only option.

The Mission Inn cost us $395.17, booked through Delta Stays. My Delta Reserve card automatically applied the $250 annual travel credit to the booking. The remaining $145.17 earned Delta miles. Net cash out of pocket for one night in a National Historic Landmark: $145.17 – this is one of the benefits of carrying so many premium cards (See “I Pay $12,489 a Year in Credit Card Annual Fees, and I Come Out Way Ahead“).

Rates for a standard room start around $200 on quieter nights and climb from there on weekends. The Princess Suite, with its pink-and-gold European castle aesthetic, starts at $364. The Alhambra Presidential Suite, where Reagan honeymooned, is bookable if you want to make an event of it.

The Delta Stays stack makes sense if you carry the Delta Reserve or Platinum card. The $250 annual travel credit applies to hotel bookings through Delta Stays, and the stay earns miles. On a $395 room, that works out to roughly $145 out of pocket. Well worth it for a night in a building this weird and this cool.

One more thing: the Mission Inn offers a guided historic tour. Book it. The public spaces are extraordinary on their own, but the tour takes you places a room key can’t: the chapel, the Aviation Wall, and the story behind every portrait and relic. The building has too much history to absorb without someone walking you through it.

We didn’t take the tour on this trip. We had a birthday to pull off and a Mustang idling at valet in the front.

But we’ll be back.

The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa: 3649 Mission Inn Ave, Riverside, CA 92501. Rooms from approximately $200/night on weekdays. Book direct or through Delta Stays if you hold a Delta Reserve or Platinum card and want to apply the annual travel credit.

Learn + Earn + Burn + Churn

Historic Hotels Mission Inn Hotel Mission Revival Architecture National Historic Landmark Riverside, California