I always thought that the Ryde Hotel was an interesting old pink european art style deco hotel located in the city of Walnut Grove, located on the river road (on one of the ways we used to go to Sacramento). So for my road trip I decided to find out more about the history. Today the Ryde hotel has a 9 hole golf course and they also have a garden area where they host weddings and other special private events. I took my boyfriend with me and we decided to go on a Sunday because they have a Sunday Brunch. I would not recommend the brunch! The weather wasn't the best when we went it was very cold and rainy, if it wouldn't have been raining it would have been a very nice drive along the river. It is in the middle of nowhere, it is located on the levee with nothing around except for a few old farm homes and the river. You can't miss the building because it is old looking, big, and pink. If the weather would have been better we would have sat on the beautiful front patio. When you walk into main entrance you can smell the oldness in the air. When the hotel was renovated in the late nineties they wanted it to represent the original design with some modern additions. Today there is 42 rooms in the hotel and some of the rooms don’t even have its own shower, they have a common shower down the hall (like back in time), and there is not a tv in the rooms as well. They want it to be old style. As you walk into the lobby you notice most things look very old. If you walk into the hallway you will see pictures of many famous people that frequented there such as President Herbert Hoover, President Reagan, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Rolling Stones, The Eagles, and Eddy Money to name a few. Then they have a sitting room that has old newspaper articles and other artifacts on display from back when the Ryde Hotel was first opened back in 1927.
Actually the hotel was originally built in 1926, but it burned down right away. So they rebuilt the hotel in 1927 (but not in the same exact spot because it was said to be bad luck if was built in the same spot. 1927 was in the peak of the Prohibition Era. The hotel was a luxurious establishment with a barber shop and beauty salon and was a riverboat way station. The people that worked on the levee’s stayed there for a while. This place was rumored to be a bordello and a place to go to have a good time. In the basement there was a speakeasy that you had to know the “secret password” to get into where they offered bootleg whiskey, gambling, shows, and jazz music. It even had a secret passageway that led you underneath the road to the edge of the river to escape if/when the police came. The hotel has had a few different owners including the Lon Chaney Jr. family. This could be why the hotel was known by mobsters and famous people during that time.
When I was there I spoke to one of the hotel managers, Randy Rice. He pointed out to me the door that led down to where the speakeasy was. He told me I could go down there and check it out. He also told me that President Hoover announced his candidacy there. He also told me that in the 70’s it was known as a rock n roll place and that it is rumored that the song, “Hotel California” was written about that hotel. I asked Randy if there was anything interesting about this place and he told me no, but as I was doing research online I saw a lot of websites saying that the Ryde hotel is known to be haunted. A few years back a crew of ghost finders went to the hotel and agreed that there is ghost activity there, it was even on the news. I called back to the hotel and left a couple of messages, but no one got back to me. Personally I think that is interesting and I would have liked to have asked if they personally noticed any kind of ghost activity. It is a very beautiful place to go and I recommend going there and checking out the history of it.
