158 Rooms, 53 Bells, and 2 Commanders in Chief

Santa Nella Hotel/Conference Center Honors Two US Presidents

Hotel Mission De Oro is one of those unusual points of interest in Central California.  

The architecture tries to capture the feel of a California Spanish mission with long sections of rooms, isolated spaces for reflection, and a bell tower.

The Hotel Mission De Oro in Santa Nella, Merced County.  Photo by Steve Newvine

The bell tower is nine stories high, and has over fifty bells.  

There is no public access to the tower’s upper levels.  

But it is impressive to the drivers passing by on Interstate 5 as well as to the visitors on the Hotel grounds.

I did not count the number of bells in the tower, but a travel website did.  

That website says there are fifty-three bells and that none of them ring.

Unfortunately, there is no public access to the inside of the nine-story bell tower, but thanks to the Hotel’s Director of Sales Shannon Cook, there is a photograph.  

To think of the vista one could experience from any window in that tower.

Inside the bell tower at The Hotel Mission De Oro.  Photo courtesy Shannon Cook, Director of Sales.

Amidst the sprawling grounds of the hotel, conference, and restaurant facility there is a tribute to two former U.S. Presidents.

Facing the complex from the back of a reflecting pool is the statue of Dwight D. Eisenhower.  A plaque beneath the bust of the thirty-fourth President commends Ike’s major domestic achievement:  the launch of the Interstate Highway system that includes Interstate Five.

The likeness of the thirty-fourth President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower on the grounds of The Hotel Mission De Oro in Santa Nella, Merced County.  Photo by Steve Newvine

The back of the Eisenhower statue faces the interstate highway.  

About thirty feet away from the Eisenhower representation is another reflecting pool and another statue.  This one is in honor of John F. Kennedy.

A statue of John F. Kennedy at The Hotel Mission De Oro in Santa Nella, Merced County.  Photo by Steve Newvine

The plaque beneath JFK’s bust cites the start of the San Luis Reservoir project in 1962.  

Kennedy traveled to the site of the Reservoir in August of 1962.

The Reservoir has provided flood protection for the area since formally opening in 1967, five years after the President’s visit.  

The Reservoir is just a few miles from The Hotel Mission De Oro.

The Kennedy statue faces the interstate.  

The sprawling grounds of The Hotel Mission De Oro in Santa Nella, Merced County.  Photo by Steve Newvine

The Hotel opened in 1975 and was acquired by a new owner four years ago.  Chris Rufer, the owner of the Morning Star Corporation, began renovations shortly after buying The Hotel Mission De Oro.  

A dining venue called the Kitchen at the Mission opened in July of 2017.  It is open every day for all three meals.

Mission Lounge is next door to the Kitchen at the Mission.  The bar has comfortable chairs, eighteen brands of beer on tap, and live music on weekends.  It opened in September 2017.

The Mission Lounge opened next door to the Kitchen at the Mission in 2-17.  Photo by Steve Newvine

According to Shannon Cook, there is more work taking place in the near future.

 “Renovations include more landscaping, creating a new wine cellar to hold two-thousand bottles of wine, and building a sound wall on the Interstate Five side to block the sound of traffic are in the works.”  

Other renovations will include work on the guest rooms, completion of the work on meeting and event space, and the addition of a gift shop.

The Hotel is actively marketing the facility for social and business events.  With one-hundred, fifty-eight hotel rooms, it can handle larger meetings and parties.

“I love introducing people to our newly renovated hotel,” Shannon says.  “We have lots going on. It’s very exciting.”

De Oro means “of gold” in English.  

The name likely connects the hotel to the discovery of gold in California back in the mid-1800s.

I stopped in to see the place after hearing some radio ads promoting the restaurant.  While I was impressed by seeing the bell tower up close, I kept going back to those statues of Kennedy and Eisenhower.  

They were two presidents and two structures that changed life in the Central Valley: Eisenhower and Interstate 5,  Kennedy and the San Luis Reservoir.

The men and the structures are connected on the grounds of The Hotel Mission De Oro in Santa Nella, Merced County.  

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.  

He writes about the fiftieth-fifth anniversary of President Kennedy’s visit to the San Luis Reservoir in 2017 and other points of interest in his book California Back Roads, available at Lulu.com

Surviving Sixty-Eight

With a perspective of fifty years, those of us who endured 1968 can now put things in proper perspective.

The Newvine family camper provided a lot of fun during a tumultuous 1968.  Photo: Newvine Family Collection

For the past five decades, we could summarize 1968 with a few quick images:  

• The springtime assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy within two months,
• The violence in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention that summer,
• The election of Richard Nixon in the fall
• The daily presence of the Vietnam War on the national television news.  

There is little doubt that year changed many of us.  

By the mid-1960s, seniors who were among the first to pay into Social Security were now collecting their benefits.  

Middle-aged people who thought they had been through the worst in World War II now scratched their heads as they watched television images of draft card burnings, college campus protests, and death in the jungles of Vietnam.  

Those in their teens and twenties feared the military draft as more and more young men would be brought into the south-east Asian quagmire.

I saw it all from a different perspective.  I was a fifth-grader in the spring of 1968. I grew up a lot during that year.

In April, we saw the aftermath of the King shooting, the rioting, the funeral procession, and the updates on the manhunt for the man who pulled the trigger.

The next month would bring tragedy to my family when my uncle Bill was killed in a car accident near my hometown.  Bill had endured a tour of duty in Vietnam. He had finished his service just six months prior to that accident.

 Finding Bill is the story about my efforts to learn more about my uncle who died six months after returning home from Vietnam.

I spent a good amount of time in later years tracking down soldiers who knew him.  I never got the chance to talk to him about his military service. He died when I was just eleven years old.  I knew that I would never know him as an uncle.

With that accident coming just a month after the King shooting, I put the events from the south out of my mind and focused on going through the grieving process with my family as we mourned the death of Bill Newvine.

In early June, the world saw Robert Kennedy gunned down in Los Angeles.  

I have distinct memories of spending a Saturday afternoon at my cousin’s dairy farm.  My cousins and I spent most of the day outside.

But whenever I came inside, my aunt Betty would be watching the Kennedy funeral on television.

I survived 1968.  Thanks to my parents.

My parents, Ed and Bea Newvine in a photo likely taken in 1968.  Photo: Newvine Family Collection

Like most parents, Ed and Bea sought to protect their children, and provide enriching experiences for them.

Our annual camping trips over the summer months remained on the calendar in 1968.  

We packed our camper and headed to Golden Beach State Park on Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks.  There, we joined with several other families from my hometown for a week of vacation.

The remainder of that summer would take us through images of violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later that summer.

The Vietnam War would continue to rage seemingly out of control as more American soldiers paid the ultimate price.

But my parents sought to keep our summer as normal as possible.  In addition to the camping trips, we’d go to the weekly firemen’s field days in Port Leyden and surrounding communities.  

My brother, sister, and I would help Mom tend to the garden or assist Dad with projects around the house.  I spent many days riding my bike and being with friends.

On weekends, my parents would take us on family day trips to such places at the Saint Lawrence Seaway or a boat cruise through the Thousand Islands of northern New York State.

The summer ended with one final camping trip to another Adirondack state park.  We returned home on Labor Day, and I entered the sixth grade the next day.

On one level, the events of 1968 made me feel as though the world was falling apart.  But in my family circle, my parents were trying to fill our free time with things to do.  This in spite of the fact my Dad was dealing with his own grief over the death of his brother earlier in the spring.

Earthrise is the name of this photograph taken during the Apollo 8 mission in December 1968.  Photo: NASA

The most hope-filled moment of 1968 came at Christmastime when the Apollo 8 mission took three astronauts around the moon for the first time ever.  

Circling the moon was an important milestone for the space program as it proved NASA could safely travel there. Astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell would fly close enough to the surface to identify favorable landing spots for the mission that would land there later in 1969.

But the moment that remains as a hopeful sign that times would get better came when the astronauts read from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968.

“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”

Those words, coupled with pictures showing the earth looking like a bright blue marble, put a final touch on a year many would just as soon forget.  

The passage ended a year of tragedy with words of hope.

“And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

1968 was filled with tragic events.  It was more than enough to endure for any child, or any adult for that matter.  

Thanks to my parents, there were some pleasant memories from 1968.

And for that, I am grateful.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.  

He wrote about the 1968 death of his uncle Bill in his book Finding Bill, available from Lulu.com