Approximate size: 4.25 inches x 3.25 inches. In my research, I couldn’t find any other photos of a pre-1905 Mount Wilson Hotel photo, so it’s possible that this is the only one left. Certainly the only one on the open market currently. I was not able to find any others on the open market going back a number of years. On the advertisement sign on the side of the hotel, it reads. The riders obscure the rest of the words. The person pictured on the left is named Bob, the brother of the original owner of this photo, and another person in the photo is named Marshall Dill, a friend of his. It’s theoretically plausible that it’s the same foundation or same spot. It’s also plausible that the 1905 hotel was the same building as the 1898 hotel, but expanded. The first reference photo (the first of the last two images in this listing) is of a postcard of the middling hotel in 1909. Although the three hotels possibly aren’t the same building (certainly not the second and third, because the second burned down), it’s helpful to know the history of the hotel(s) in the area. The middling-timeframe hotel was constructed around 1905 to accommodate visitors to Mount Wilson. It stood as a one-story building with additional cottages for overnight guests. Unfortunately, this first hotel met a fiery fate in 1913 when it burned down. Following the fire, a third Mount Wilson Hotel was erected in 1915. This hotel became a landmark, gracing the mountain for fifty years until its demolition in 1966. The Mount Wilson Hotel Company owned an impressive 1050 acres of land surrounding Mount Wilson, extending approximately one mile in each direction from the hotel. Visitors could explore the nearby observatory and indulge in recreational activities like hiking, sledding, and skiing. Wildlife, including deer, birds, and squirrels, added to the natural allure of the area. Mount Wilson is renowned for housing the historic Mount Wilson Observatory. Notably, a 60-inch telescope was completed at the summit in 1908, and a 150-foot Solar Tower graced the landscape in 1910. The observatory played a pivotal role in astronomical research and observation in Southern California. The mountain bears the name of Benjamin D. Wilson, originally hailing from Tennessee, made his way to California in 1841. In 1864, he blazed the first modern trail to the summit of Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains, a trail still known as the Mount Wilson Trail. Regarding the history of Mount Wilson overall. In 1889, Professor William Pickering of Harvard University, along with telescope-maker Alvan Clark, prepared an experiment with 4-and-13-inch (102 and 330 mm) telescopes at Mount Wilson. University students would operate the telescopes for nighttime viewing, but more often than not they would log in “bad weather, no visibility” and head to town to relieve their boredom. The small observatory was abandoned with plans to build a larger one at a later date. In 1891, Thaddeus S. Lowe incorporated the Pasadena & Mount Wilson Railroad with the plan of building a scenic mountain railroad to the summit of Mt. At the same time, land and easement disputes between camp owners Steils and Strain were going on over the public and private use of the Mount Wilson Trail. The courts ruled that the trail was a public thoroughfare and that any blockading would be illegal. At the foot of the mountain, a local contractor Thomas Banbury built a 10 mi roadway to be named “The New Mount Wilson Trail, ” now the Mount Wilson Toll Road. Walter Raymond, of Raymond & Whitcomb Travel Agency, Boston, and owner of the Raymond Hotel, Pasadena, offered to pay for rail from New York. Lowe offered to take the lenses up via his yet-to-be-built Mt. The lenses ended up at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, and Lowe’s railway ended up going to Oak Mountain (Mount Lowe). By 1901, The Mount Wilson Toll Road Co. In 1903, George Ellery Hale visited Mt. Wilson and was impressed by the perfect conditions for which to set up the observatory, which would become the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory in 1904. In 1926, Albert Abraham Michelson made what was then the most precise calculation of the speed of light at the time by measuring the round-trip travel time of light between Mount Wilson and Mount San Antonio 22 miles away. Please inspect the pictures, as they give the best representation of condition. There are creased corners, wear, and light discoloration to the photo, relatively normal for its age.
