September 6, 2017

The Spanish established a chain of 21 missions in California in the late 18th and early 19th century, stretching from San Diego to Sonoma. The mission properties were rather wealthy and included industrial operations, by some accounts owning 1/6 of Alta California. They were secularized after Mexican independence and fell into various states of disrepair. Many have been restored to their original(but smaller) state. They are now owned by the Catholic Church and are both museums and active churches.

Mission San Juan Capistrano

I visited Mission San Juan Capistrano in the late 60’s as a child and wanted to revisit it; being that I didn’t want to fight traffic driving down to southern Orange County, I took AmTrak from Union Station to San Juan Capistrano. Mission San Juan Capistrano was the 7th mission established in 1776. It contains “Serra Chapel”, the only know building still standing that FatherSt. Junipero Serra celebrated mass and is the oldest building in the State of California. The mission also contains the ruins of “The Great Stone Church” that was built in the early 1800’s and was promptly destroyed in the 1812 7.5 magnitude San Juan Capistrano earthquake during morning mass with a loss of 42 lives. A basilica that was based upon the design of “The Great Stone Church” was built next to the mission in the 1980’s.