VIGNETTE > Hotels

1952 saw the end of an era — no more hotel accommodations in Mill Valley although there were six motor courts on highway 101. The last surviving hotel downtown was serendipitously named the Aloha House. It was a 19-room hotel dating back to 1909 on the second floor of the O’Shaughnessy Building across Throckmorton from the Bank of America. Mill Valley’s first hotel was the Blithedale Hotel. From 1880 to 1909, it was one of the most popular and highly regarded hotels in Northern California. Four other hotels were in Blithedale Canyon:  Woodside Inn in the 1890s; the Eastland Hotel, destroyed by fire in 1902; the Abbey, a casualty of the 1929 fire; and the Jefferson Hotel. Cascade Canyon had the Monte Vista Hotel built in 1893 and later called the Kenilworth. It was destroyed by fire in 1913. The Belleview Hotel later became the Madrona Hotel. Mill Valley House, a large building at 30 Miller, had several stores on the ground floor and a boarding house upstairs. Abbotsford Villa was located at the site of the present city hall. The Sequoia was on Lovell. The era of no hotels downtown ended in 1994 when the Mill Valley Inn opened at 165 Throckmorton.