La Purisima State Historic Park

   

Situated near the city of Lompoc sits the most completely restored of California’s twenty one missions, Mission La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisma. The eleventh of the missions, founded on December 8, 1787 by Father Fermin de Lasuen, the feast day of the Immaculate Conception in the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. The mission was one of three, along with San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara which were built to link the missions in the south to those farther north, to solidify the Spanish presence along the Santa Barbara Channel, and to keep the indigenous tribes in the area under Spanish control.

The original mission was situated south of the town of Lompoc, near what is now 508 South F Street. The site was well chosen, and soon after its founding the Mission was prospering. By 1804, the mission reached its highest number of neophytes, 1520. This was not to last. By 1812, a series of drought years and epidemics of measles, smallpox, and other diseases decimated the indigenous population. It was reported by the friars at the mission that the neophyte population had fallen to 999 and that the mission had several years of inadequate harvests. Then the earthquake of 1812 struck. The mission was severely damaged, torrential rains and flooding made the mission site uninhabitable. After trying to continue in rudimentary structures made of “poles and grass”, the mission padres decided to rebuild the mission at its present location about four miles northwest of the original site.

The padres petitioned the government to build and on March 30, 1813, permission was given to build a replacement mission on its current site. By 1821, the mission was largely completed with the exception of a mill that was added in 1827. By the death of Padre Mariano Payeras in 1823, who had led the mission since 1804, the mission had over ten thousand head of cattle, ten thousand sheep, over fourteen hundred horses, over three hundred mules, one hundred ten hogs, and thirty three goats. While the mission had a remarkable recovery from drought and natural disaster, the path had not been easy.

Beginning with the relocation of the mission in 1812, funding had not been forthcoming from the government in Mexico City. The Hidalgo Revolt had thrown the government into chaos and the missions and civil government in Alta California were left to their own devices. The civil and military officers began to require contributions from the missions in both goods and labor to meet the expenses of governing the province. The next setback was the Earthquake of 1812 which necessitated the relocation and rebuilding of the mission. Third was the death of Father Payeras, whose administrative skills helped the mission thrive, in the face of hardship and last, there was the Revolt of 1824, in which the indigenous people at Santa Ines revolted after a Chumash was severely beaten by a soldier. The Chumash set fire to the mission, partially destroying it. The Chumash at La Purisima forced the mission’s soldiers to surrender and took over the mission for a period of thirty days until they were forced to surrender after a three hour battle in which sixteen Chumash and one soldier were killed.

The Revolt of 1824 severely weakened Mission La Purisima’s ability to sustain itself. By 1832 only 322 Chumash remained at the mission and there were fewer that 14,000 head of livestock. Th annual report of 1832 would be the last one made for Mission La Purisima. In 1835, the mission was secularized and the last two resident padres were ordered to Mission Santa Ines. The mission became the property of the Government of Mexico and in six months the value of the buildings and land declined by over fifty percent. Despite a decree in 1843, which restored ownership of the mission to the Franciscans, Governor Pio Pico sold the remains of the mission, valued at nearly $62,000 in 1835, to John Temple of Los Angeles at auction for a mere $1,110.

In 1851, after California became a state, the Bishop Alemany of Monterey sued to have the property returned to the church. The suit was successful and the land was awarded to the Church. President Grant signed the patent on January 24, 1874. Mission La Purisima would remain church property for another nine years. In 1883, the Diocese of Monterey sold all of the mission property, with the exception of the church and cemetery and the former mission property was bought and sold several times as the mission buildings crumbled. In 1903, Union Oil of California acquired the mission and in 1915, deeded the property to the Landmarks Club of Southern California on condition that they raise $1500 to begin restoration. The Landmarks Club failed to do so and title reverted back to Union Oil.

In 1933, the land and remains of the mission were deeded to Santa Barbara County and then the deed was transferred to the state. In 1934, a Civilian Conservation Corps cam was established on site and with the National Park Service and restoration of the mission began in earnest. Using existing records and artifacts, the mission was restored as accurately as possible. The restored mission was dedicated on December 7, 1941 and became part of the Mission La Purisima State Historic Park. It remains the only fully restored mission in California. In 2009, a new visitor’s center was built with displays highlighting the Chumash, mission life and the restoration.

GETTING THERE: From 414 Mason Street: Get on I-80 West and continue onto US 101 South. Stay on US 101 South. Take exit 166 and turn right onto East Union Valley Parkway. After 1.5 miles, turn left onto CA 135 South/Orcutt Expressway. Continue onto CA 1 South. After 3.2 miles, take the ramp onto CA-1 South toward Lompoc/Vandenberg AFB. When you arrive at Vandenberg, turn left to stay n CA-1 toward Lompoc. Bear left onto La Purisima Road. The park entrance will be on your left. The trip is 298 miles and takes approximately five hours. The park’s address is 2295 Purisima Road, Lompoc, CA 93436.

The park is open from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm daily except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Days. The Visitor’s Center is open 10:00 to 4:00 Tuesday through Sunday and 11:00 to 4:00 on Mondays. The park’s phone number is: (805) 733-3713. Day use fees are $6.00 for parking and there is a discounted fee of $5.00 for those 62 and over. There are many places to stay and eat in Lompoc and the surrounding towns and cities.

San Juan Bautista State Historic Park

 

South of Gilroy, east of US-101, located near the mouth of San Juan Canyon on CA-156, lies the city of San Juan Bautista. Founded on June 24, 1797 with the establishment of Mission San Juan Bautista by Fermin Lasuen; the site for what would become California’s fifteenth mission was chosen due its proximity to a large population of the indigenous Mutsun people. Soon after the mission’s founding over 1,000 Mutsun were living, working, and worshiping at the mission. As with most of the missions, a Spanish settlement developed and the town of San Juan Bautista was born.

By 1803, the congregation had outgrown the original adobe church and construction began on the present mission which was completed in 1812. This construction and expansion made it the largest of the twenty one missions. Mission San Juan Bautista remained an active church after secularization in 1835. In 1859, the mission buildings and fifty five acres of land were returned to the Catholic Church. Today, the mission remains an active parish church in the Diocese of Monterey. Besides being an active house of worship for 226 years, the mission also was a location in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Vertigo”, starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. It sits on the western edge of the last remaining intact Spanish plaza in California and on the northern edge of the plaza is a remaining section of the original El Camino Real which linked all of the missions in California.

The mission has a gift shop and a museum which has displays of Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and American era artifacts including handwritten choir books by Padre Esteban Tapis using the system of colored notation he developed and the Breen family bible. The Breens temporarily lived in a storeroom of the mission, which is now the gift shop, after surviving the ordeal of the Donner Party and before moving into, and eventually purchasing an adobe from General Jose Antonio Castro. The Breen family lived in the adobe until 1933 when it was donated to the state. It is now known as the Castro-Breen Adobe. It houses exhibits on the Breen family and life during the early American Era.

The Castro-Breen Adobe is but one of several buildings preserved or restored in the San Juan Bautista State Historic Park. Also included are the Plaza Hotel, the ground floor of which was originally constructed in 1792 as a barracks for indigenous converts and laborers. It became the barracks for Spanish soldiers in 1813. It was also a private residence and a commercial building before being remodeled into the current hotel in 1853 by Angelo Zanetta. It currently serves as the park entrance and museum. Several rooms are furnished as they would have been in the 1860’s.

On the plaza is the Plaza Hall/Zanetta House, originally built in 1815 as a home for the unmarried indigenous girls of the mission, purchased, torn down and rebuilt as a home and community hall in 1868 by Angelo Zanetta. It has exhibits of period furnishings and early children’s toys. Next to it is the Plaza Stable with exhibits of stages, wagons, and fire wagons. Behind the stable is the blacksmith’s shop. Across the street are the original town jail and a restored settler’s cabin.

The downtown area of San Juan Bautista has been designated a National Historic District and the San Juan Historical Society, along with other organizations, has designated 49 buildings and sites on a historic walking tour. Many of the buildings date from the late 1700’s through the 1920’s and are still in use. Examples are the Anza Adobe, the Texas Masonic Lodge, the San Juan Bautista Cemetery and the Carl Luck Museum. Most of the historic buildings are clustered along Third Street, a block south from the mission.

During the Gold Rush, San Juan Bautista benefited from a boom as it was along the route from Los Angeles to San Francisco and then to the gold fields. Notables like William T. Sherman visited the town. When the Southern Pacific railroad bypassed San Juan Bautista in favor of Hollister the town’s fortunes declined. The building of the San Juan Pacific Railway and the San Juan Cement Company plant, beginning in 1906, revived the local economy. When the cement plant closed in 1973 due to increasingly tighter environmental regulations, the city turned to agriculture and tourism. San Juan Bautista calls itself, “The City of History”, and not without some justification.

GETTING THERE: From 414 Mason Street: Take US 101 South to Exit 345 to CA-156 East. Follow CA-156 East to The Alameda. Turn left onto The Alameda. Turn right onto Franklin St. Turn left onto 2^nd St. The park entrance is in the Plaza Hotel on you left. The Mission is on your right. The entrance fee for the park is $3.00 per person. The Mission charges a $10.00 entrance fee. ($7.00 for Seniors over 60) It is a 1 hour and 40 minute, 94 mile, drive from 414 Mason Street.

San Juan Bautista SHP is open every day from 10am to 4:30pm. Closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day.

The Mission Gift Shop, Museum and Garden are open from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Wednesday through Sunday.

Admission: Self-Guided Tour

$10.00 adults

$7.00 seniors – 60 years and over

$5.00 – vets

Under 5 years of age – FREE

Mission San Juan Bautista admission is separate from the State Park admission.

For the walking tour, please visit: https://historicwalkingtrail.com/

French Camp

 

        In front of an elementary school in an unincorporated community near Stockton; there is a California State Historic Marker, placed by the California State Parks Commission, partially in cooperation with the Native Daughters of the Golden West.  It recognizes the community of French Camp as a historic place as the terminus of the Oregon-California Trail and as a camp used by traders and trappers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, at one time one of, if not the largest fur trading corporation in the world. 

The text of the plaque reads: 

“Here was the terminus of the Oregon-California Trail used from about 1832 to 1845 by the French-Canadian trappers employed by the Hudson's Bay Company. Every year Michel La Framboise, among others, met fur hunters camped with their families here. In 1844 Charles M. Weber and William Gulnac promoted the first white settlers' colony on Rancho del Campo de los Franceses, which included French Camp and the site of Stockton.”

As early as 1493, Spain laid claim to all the lands 100 leagues west of the Azores based on the Papal Bull “Inter Caetera” issued by Pope Alexander IV.  This bull gave Spain a monopoly to colonize the lands west of the 100 league line.  In the next year, Pope Alexander VI mediated the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal which moved the demarcation line between the two countries’  respective spheres of colonization to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, granting Brazil to Portugal and the rest of the “New World” to Spain.  With Balboa’s sighting of the Pacific Ocean in 1513,  Spain had a solid claim to the west coasts of North and South America.  It wasn’t until Cabrillo and Bartolome Ferrelo’s  voyages in 1542-43 that Spain made any attempt to see how far their claim actually went and what it might contain. Later voyages in the 1700’s by Juan Perez and Bruno de Hecta kept Spain’s claims viable. 

Spain was not alone in laying claim to the Pacific Coast.  England based it’s claims to parts of the Pacific Coast on the voyages of Sir Francis Drake and George Vancouver.  Russia claimed parts of the Pacific Coast too, based on the 1728 and 1741 voyages of Vitus Bering.  The United States also claimed parts of the area based on the 1792 voyage of Robert Grey and the overland expedition of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery as well as John Jacob Astor’s establishment of Fort Astoria in 1811.  With all these competing claims, conflict was inevitable.  When the Spanish captured four British ships in 1789 in Nooka Sound near Vancouver Island, Great Britain threatened war, leading to what what was called the “Nootka Crisis”.  Spain quickly negotiated a settlement and relinquished its exclusive claims to the Pacific Coast.  By 1824, both Russia and Spain had given up their claims to the Pacific Northwest.

Why did these counties all want a piece of the Pacific Coast?  Well, for trade with the native tribes, for a harbor on the Pacific to facilitate trade with China and the rest of Asia, and most importantly, for the vast natural resources of the region one of the most valuable of which were the pelts of fur bearing animals.  Before the Gold Rush, the main impetus for coming to California was trade.  The Russian American Company established Fort Ross as both a trading and agricultural supply post for its outposts in Alaska.  John Jacob Astor established Fort Astoria and an outpost for his Pacific Fur Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Vancouver on the north bank of the Columbia River.  American, British, and French-Canadian trappers and mountain men combed the Cascades, Sierra Nevada, Coast Ranges, Willamette, and Central Valleys for otter and beaver which were becoming scarce further east. Meanwhile, at sea, seals and sea otters were hunted from the Aleutian Islands to Baja California.  

With the absorption of the North West Company in 1821, the Hudson’s Bay Company had a monopoly on the fur trade in British North America.  Its agents roamed from the Rockies to the Pacific, from the Arctic Ocean to California’s San Joaquin Valley searching for beaver and otter and trading with the Native tribes.  Fort Umpqua was established in Southern Oregon in 1836 and, in 1841, the Hudson’s Bay Company opened a store in Yerba Buena.  French Camp arguably was the southernmost extent of the Company’s activities in California.  Beginning in about 1832, Michel La Framboise, a French-Canadian “voyageur” hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company made annual visits to French Camp as the leader of several fur hunting expeditions.  In fact La Framboise had been warned against taking beaver in California in 1834 and in 1835; General Mariano Vallejo warned him to leave and stay out of California altogether.  Eventually, the activities of the “Spanish Brigade” as the company of Hudson’s Bay men were called, became bothersome not only to Vallejo, but to John A. Sutter and Dr. John Marsh, both of whom complained to the government and demanded that something be done.  As a result, the governor placed a duty on furs taken in California and by 1842, the HBC trappers withdrew.

The fur trade was one of the major impetuses for the westward expansion of the United States and the early exploration as settlement of the Pacific Coast.  However, it was not to last.  By 1846, the Hudson’s Bay Company withdrew from California and the Oregon Treaty was signed ending the dispute between Great Britain and the United States over their competing claims.  In the treaty, the HBC was allowed to continue operating Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia, but the Company abandoned the fort in 1860.  By the late 1800’s many of the fur bearing animals had been hunted to near extinction.  Due to the decline of fur bearing mammals, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and Japan signed the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911,  which was the first international treaty concerned with wildlife conservation.  This led to the Fur Seal Act of 1966 which extended protection to sea otters and the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which prohibits the taking of any marine mammal in United States waters and by any US citizen on the high seas, with a very few permitted exemptions. Today, the Hudson’s Bay Company continues as a retail company in Canada and in 1943, the HBC renamed its fur trading division as the “Northern Stores Division”, and in 1987 the “Northern Stores Division” was sold and became a new “North West Company” and operates stores in northwest Canada and Alaska.  The “California Fur Rush” only lasted a few short years, but it is remembered in a few places, like French Camp, and it’s legacy are some of the first wildlife protection laws in history.

GETTING THERE: From 414 Mason Street:  Get on I-80 East.  Take exit 8B onto I-580 East. After 45 miles stay left onto I-205 toward Tracy and Stockton.  Merge onto I-5 N.  Take exit 467A onto Eldorado Street.  Turn right onto East Mathews Road, continue onto Ash Street.  Turn left onto French Camp Road and then right onto Elm Street.  The marker will be on your right.  It is about a two hour drive from San Francisco.