The Julian Gold Rush Hotel, Built by a Black Couple After the Rush
Near Julian, California
The oldest continuously operating hotel in Southern California stands on Main Street in Julian, and it was built by a Black couple in the years after the gold rush. Albert Robinson had been born into slavery in Tennessee. He and his wife Margaret came to Julian in the eighteen eighties, drawn by the entrepreneurial opportunity the mining community offered.
They opened a restaurant and bakery in eighteen eighty seven, feeding miners and the growing community. The business prospered well enough that Albert began constructing a hotel on the same street, a two-story building meant to accommodate the steady flow of visitors coming up from San Diego. The hotel opened around eighteen ninety seven.
Albert continued running it with Margaret until his death in nineteen fifteen, after which she carried on alone. She ran it for nearly two decades, becoming one of the most prominent businesspeople in Julian. In nineteen twenty one, unable to manage the building alone, she sold it for fifteen hundred dollars.
The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy eight. Today it operates as the Julian Gold Rush Hotel, and historians regard it as one of the first African American-owned hotels in California. The Robinsons built their enterprise in the years when most of American society was working to deny Black people economic opportunity.
In Julian, the gold rush had created a window, and they walked through it.
