East County History

Knox House Museum

The Knox House Museum is the first commercial building in El Cajon, erected eleven years after the end of the Civil War. It is the original portion of the hotel that Amaziah Knox built in 1876 near what is now the southeast corner of Main Street and Magnolia Avenue. Originally a two-story, seven-room structure serving as Knox’s residence and hotel, it soon boasted an add-on kitchen and dining room.

Knox had come to the Valley in 1869, the year that most of the area was formally opened for settlement. Employed by Isaac Lankershim, owner of the greater part of the Rancho El Cajon land grant previously in the possession of the Pedrorena family of Old Town, Knox was hired to manage the planting of wheat and to build a ranch house. For his services, Lankershim paid Knox a salary and his choice of ten acres. The land he chose lay where the road from San Diego turned toward Lakeside.

But back in 1870, when Knox had been here a year, gold was discovered in Julian. Lying half-way between that town and the growing city of San Diego, Knox’s ten acres was an ideal spot for teamsters, miners, and drovers to overnight. With the number of travelers
booming in 1876, Knox built his hotel and some corrals for $1,000. So successful was the hotel that the bend in the road became known as Knox’s Corners. Two years later there were 25 families living in the valley and a portion of the hotel lobby became the valley post office with Knox as the first postmaster.