The Hotel Riviera del Pacífico was a hotel located in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. It was one of the most prestigious and luxurious hotels in Baja California, and is one of several candidates for having hosted the invention of the Margarita cocktail.
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The hotel opened with great fanfare in 1930, but was not a real success until the early 1950s. It finally closed in 1964.
Prohibition sent North Americans south of their border in search of entertainment and alcohol, developing first Tijuana, then Rosarito, and finally Ensenada as tourist destinations.
The North American Compañía Mexicana del Rosarito decided to establish in Ensenada a grand hotel, initially called the Hotel Playa de Ensenada (Ensenada Beach Hotel), designed by Gordon F. Mayer in the most dramatic and luxurious style with materials sent south from the United States. It opened with spectacular festivities in 1930, including the Xavier Cugat band, under the management of Jack Dempsey, a famous and fashionable boxer.
The hotel was never a financial success, however, partly because the road from the United States was poor, and the end of Prohbition proved fatal. The hotel only ever operated intermittently, and was put to military use during the Second World War.
After the end of the War, one of the original shareholders, Jerome Utley of Detroit, by then an old man and the only remaining shareholder, gave the hotel to a young lady with whom he was in love, Marjorie King Plant. Plant ran the hotel successfully with her Mexican lawyer and husband, Alfonso Rocha, changing its name to Hotel Riviera del Pacífico. Utley had been led to believe that Plant's marriage to Rocha was a "white marriage," that is a marriage of convenience serving only to give Plant the Mexican citizenship she needed to run the hotel, and when he discovered that this was not the case, he pursued Plant and then Rocha with court cases, leading first to Plant's leaving the hotel for the United States and then to Rocha's absconding from the hotel in 1956 to avoid a judgment against him. At this point the hotel was taken over by the Mexican government, which closed and partly demolished it in 1964.[1]
The Margarita is claimed to have been invented in several different places and at several different times. One claim is that it was invented at the Hotel Riviera del Pacífico for Marjorie King Plant at the time when she was the joint owner.[2] Other versions refer to Marjorie King, an actress, and some move the location from Ensenada to Tijuana. Margarita is a Spanish version of the name Marjorie.
The hotel's claim seems unlikely, as the earliest stories refer to the 1930s, and Marjorie King Plant did not arrive in Ensenada until the late 1940s.
Partly rebuilt in 1978, the hotel was reopened as the Centro Social, Cívico y Cultural de Ensenada.[3] This includes an open-air theater, a historical museum, and a number of rooms used for a variety of functions.