History
Tom Patterson, as well as most local Riverside historians, have concluded that the original name of Mount Rubidoux was Pachappa. They speculate that one of the early owners of Rancho Jurupa reassigned the name Pachappa to another, smaller hill, in order to expand the property of the Rancho. Since Pachappa hill was designated as the southeast marker of the Jurupa Rancho, which was granted by the Mexican government to Juan Bandini in 1838, reassigning the name to the current Pachappa hill would have expanded the Rancho Jurupa significantly, incorporating all of the area covered by today's downtown Riverside. It is also possible the United States government renamed the hills in order to satisfy acreage requirements of the original Mexican land Grant.
In 1906 Frank Miller, owner of the Mission Inn, along with Henry E. Huntington and Charles M. Loring, formed the Huntington Park Association and purchased the property with the intent to build a road to the summit and develop the mountain as a park to benefit the city of Riverside. Originally the park was named Huntington Park, but the name was changed to the Frank A. Miller Mount Rubidoux Memorial Park after the heirs of Frank Miller donated the property to the city in 1955. On December 13, 1925 the Testimonial Peace Tower, devoted to peace, was dedicated to Miller. The bridge is a replica of a noted bridge in Alcántara, Spain.
Initial improvements, including the road, were completed in February 1907. The first memorial marker on the mountain, the cross and tablet at the summit honoring Father Junipero Serra, was dedicated on April 26, 1907. Serra supposedly often travelled through the valley and rested at Rubidoux Rancho.
A sunset over Mount Rubidoux, in 1909, was the occasion for Carrie Jacobs-Bond to compose her famous song, "A Perfect Day", which for many years was played each day as the last tune on the Mission Inn's carillon.
Mount Rubidoux was designated Riverside City landmark no. 26, and has been a city park since 1955, when the land was donated to the city by Frank Miller's heirs.
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)