Small San Jacinto hotel served area for nearly 100 years until unfortunate end – Press Enterprise

On San Jacinto’s Main Street once stood a hotel which, at various times, was called the Lockwood House, Pioneer Hotel or Virginia Lee Hotel.

It was a quaint and unassuming building that had a long history and, unfortunately, a not-so-glorious end.

In 1883, San Jacinto resident Tom Lockwood constructed and opened the small hotel on the south side of Main Street between Sheriff and Jordan streets.

Called the Lockwood House, the hotel only had about a dozen rooms, but given San Jacinto’s population at the time, that was probably all that was needed. Tom and his wife Lorinda ran the hotel for a while. However, Tom died in 1893. Lorinda continued to run the hotel until she died in 1911.

With the passing of Lorinda Lockwood, ownership passed to their granddaughter, Lela Lockwood Noble. By 1911, their sole child Charles had already died, leaving three children, of which Lela was the oldest. Charles is best known in San Jacinto history as one of the major players in the town of Kenworthy up in the San Jacinto Mountains.

Lela Noble took up the cause and ran the Lockwood House for many years. She was the defining force behind it, and luckily there are reminiscences of hers printed in the newspapers and also in the collections of the San Jacinto Museum that shed light on those interesting times in San Jacinto.

Lela was only 17 when she took over running the Lockwood House. She would run it until 1947, when she sold it out of the Lockwood family for the first time in more than 60 years.

During her tenure, a number of improvements were made, and the lot just to the west of the hotel lot was purchased for a garden. Much of that garden area was designed and improved by Ken Kreigh, the well-known rock sculptor of the area, about whom I did an article several years ago.

After the sale by Lela in 1947, the hotel went through a number of owners, some for as short a time as one year. In 1955, it was sold to Ellen Sherwood. It is she who renamed the hotel to the Pioneer Hotel, which the building was known as for about 20 years or so. It remained a small and quaint but aging hotel throughout these years.