[Various. Photo via Chris Shervey, Colorized by Cris Alarcon]
"The Ohio House. Deluxe hotel on Main. Three stories high with 72 bedrooms. Built in 1892 and destroyed by fire in 1921. It resided at the corner of Sacramento & Main St. Mel's Diner parking lot exists at this location now." - Chris Shervey.
NOTE: The following comments refer to a different old picture from the prespective of Looking at the Front of the Hotel with trees on right of the building that photo. C.A.
“one of the finest hotels in the Mother Lode—the Ohio House. It filled the entire block,” claims George McKee, a member of the El Dorado County Historical Society, “and had hot and cold running water in the rooms. After a fire in 1891, a power plant was installed to run electric lights. A three story annex was also added.”
Details of the Ohio House are vivid for McKee, who was born in 1908. “I remember my father telling the tale of how he took me into the hotel’s bar as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, He sat me on the bar and they gave me a hankie filled with sugar to keep me happy.”
For almost ten years, the Ohio House was a part of the McKee family. McKee’s grandfather, George W. McKee, owned and operated the hotel from 1889 to 1898. During the younger McKee’s childhood, he recalls seeing the poplar trees shown in the worn postcard of the Ohio House.
“Those trees ran right along Main Street. I also remember that on the west end of the building, there was a garden with cast iron furniture, manicured lawns and shrubs. The Ohio House had a beautiful, large ballroom and dining room, too,” he recalls.
Placerville's Ohio House was one of the finest hotels to grace the Mother Lode at the turn of the century.
The glory days of the Ohio House ended when fire struck for the third time in June 1921. “Not only was the hotel lost, but the editor of the Georgetown Gazette, John C. Horn, died in the fire,” says Shirley Pont.
Pont, a member of the Heritage Association of El Dorado County, pulls out a news clipping from 1921 to corroborate the facts. Horn’s body was found on the third floor of the Ohio House. Apparently Horn was running from room, making sure that everyone escaped the fire, when he was overcome by smoke.
Although the corner of Sacramento and Main streets had “hosted first the Miner’s Hotel and then the Ohio House, the hotel was not rebuilt,” notes Marilyn Ferguson, another member of the Heritage Association. “The whole block is now a parking lot and a restaurant.”
Ferguson and Pont both murmur approving comments as they pour over the last postcard. Placerville’s Main Street, captured in a photograph taken between 1900 and 1910, has held up fairly well under the test of time. “Here’s Shafsky’s Department Store. You can see the words engraved on the front of the building,” Ferguson announces, pointing to a large building on the left. “Later, it became the Santa Rita Hotel. Now it’s an antique store.”
