The Holbrooke Hotel

The Golden Gate Saloon opened on this site in 1851 and has poured continuously since 1852, which makes it a serious candidate for the oldest working saloon west of the Mississippi. Fire took the building in 1855; it was rebuilt in stone and brick as the Exchange Hotel, and in 1870 Daniel P. Holbrooke bought it and gave it his name. It has been in continuous operation ever since — the oldest such hotel in California — and its registers carry four presidents (Grant, Garfield, Cleveland and Harrison), Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and the highwayman Black Bart. Staff and guests report chairs dragged across the floor of the downstairs reception hall, lights switching themselves on and off, and voices carrying up from the room when it is empty. Several of the upstairs guest rooms have their own long-standing reports, generally attributed to travellers who treated the Holbrooke as a second home.