A thirty-six-year-old Bob Morris rode into Temecula on horseback in 1969 when the population of Temecula and Murrieta together was less than 3,000. The undisturbed charm of the sleepy town grabbed him. He determined in a moment to move his family to Temecula where it would be his home for the remaining fifty years of his life.
At the time Bob fell in love with Temecula, Old Town was a rundown area bypassed by the state highway, but he and his new friend Tommy Hotchkiss determined to breathe life back into Temecula by updating it to an 1890s look, hoping to make it like the authentic cowboy town it once was. They started by changing the façade on Hotchkiss’s Swing Inn restaurant and moved on to other projects that continue to give Old Town its distinctive vibe today.
Bob said, “I wanted to keep Temecula as a fun place to walk through.” Now hundreds of residents and tourists have fun walking through Old Town each week enjoying the touches of the Old West with a wink of whimsy that he placed throughout.
You cannot enter Old Town without passing under one of the arches Bob designed with cutout images of Temecula’s past. Each person who passes the corners of Old Town Front Street and Main steps across the four medallions imbedded in the sidewalk that Bob created to celebrate eras of Temecula’s past. Throughout Old Town where you see a historic flourish, it was made by Bob Morris. He designed the Clocktower Building on Main Street, and the Tank Building and Antique Faire on Old Town Front Street.
Inspiration came to Bob at random times, and he drew his concepts on what was at hand, sometimes a napkin or a piece of board. Bob had a compulsion to salvage discarded architectural pieces and to design new and usable structures from the incredibly interesting historic parts. Bob savored not just the beauty of the rustic pieces, but also the stories the pieces told of places demolished and barely remembered.
Bob poured his heart into the construction of the Butterfield Square shopping center that dominated the corner across from the Swing Inn. It was a delightful and intriguing collection of rustic shops and restaurants. To construct it, Bob salvaged historical materials to reuse to extend their lives. Some of the components were the pressed metal ceiling from the Alberhill Post Office, wood remnants from the Hemet stock farm and an old Vail barn, a wood packing crate used to ship one of the Palomar telescopes, and windows from Murrieta Hot Springs. After being the cornerstone for activity in Old Town for forty years, a new owner demolished Butterfield Square in 2019 to make room for an ambitious hotel project that never came to fruition.
One of his lasting masterpieces is his home in DeLuz where he let his imagination run wild. Imagine using the bell of a tuba attached to a length of chain to drain water from the eaves, building a bedroom around a tree, and placing a clawfoot tub in the center of a room with a bay window looking out to oak woodlands.
Besides his artful additions to Old Town, Bob was also the main instigator for an annual event in Temecula. When asked how the famed Temecula Tractor Race started, he said he was visiting with his friend Warner Stewart from Murrieta. “I remember the day … we stood looking at the old Dodge cars that had been converted into tractors during the Depression years which his relative had used to farm this valley. They had been sitting in the field for many, many years. You could tell that they had been touring cars at one time. Both were shortened and had Model T truck rear ends with bigger tires on the back. Both were covered with rust and dirt. Hardened black rubber tires with weathered wood boxes used as seats and the grass that grew around them was as tall as the hoods. But I saw beauty especially in one. I think now because it was a little lower-slung. I asked Warner, ‘Do you think these will still run?’ Warmer put his arm on my shoulder and said, ‘You d*mn right they will,’ or something like that. I said I would like to buy this one, and Warner made me a heck of a deal. And that day we made our wager that we would make them run and race from Murrieta to Temecula, so we met with Tommy Hotchkiss and told him of our plan and that is how the Great Temecula Tractor Race began.”
The Temecula Tractor Race became an annual event each fall that ran from 1977 to the mid-2000s. They started in the Murrieta Creek bed where participants came out wet and covered with mud. As word spread about the event, audiences of as many as 25,000 came to witness the ruckus. Bob drove his famous “Sodbuster” and Tommy Hotchkiss drove the “Sharecropper.”
When Bob died, a couple hundred people gathered to remember him at Vail HQ for a homey service under the shadow of the water tank he once owned. Friends were told to bring their own chairs, dress in Western garb, and to bring a plate of cookies to share. Well-behaved horses and dogs were also invited and some mingled with guests.
Few of us are immortalized by monumental work that we have done, but Bob Morris, a gifted artist in the medium of historic architecture, will long be remembered for imbedding historical features into the ground we walk upon and the arches we walk under in Old Town Temecula.
With so much of Bob Morris's vision being embedded in the character of his former property, the new owners of the ranch are proud stewards of his legacy and are happy to share this timeless treasure for filming, retreats, and events. For more information contact Tracy Finch at Info@GeminiMoonRanch.com / www.geminimoonranch.com.
Now hundreds of residents and tourists have fun walking through Old Town each week enjoying the touches of the Old West with a wink of whimsy that he placed throughout.