Mission San Buenaventura

In 1782 the ninth Spanish Mission to be established in California was completed after a thirty-three year construction process.  It is situated within the boundaries of the present day city of Ventura.  The Mission is only a short walk beyond the trail to the beach we explored on Sunday.  We pass by the mission every day on our way to our meeting and viewing the buildings stimulates my continual fascination with history.  So what happened here?

Father Juniper Serra of the Franciscan order established this Mission.  It was the ninth and last Mission Father Serra founded in his lifetime.  He named the site after Saint Bonaventure-a man who was regarded in the 13th Century as one of the greatest Middle Age philosophers of his time.  The Mission was called “San Buenaventura”-a name that survives to today with the city calling itself “Ventura”.

The Mission survived the poor luck of losing its first church building to a fire and then a second building at the site was abandoned after a door gave way.  However, they persevered and by 1809 the present day church building was dedicated.  But poor luck continued to plague the padres.  They were forced to leave the site in 1812 following an earthquake with an accompanying tidal wave and only six years later they fled into the hills again to escape the ravages of pirates!  Interestingly in the middle of all of these plights, a system of aqueducts to transport water to the Mission was completed by 1815 using both ditches and elevated stone masonry from the Ventura River over half a mile away.  With the reliable source of water, the Mission was able to create orchards and gardens until floods damaged the system in 1862.  It was not repaired.  In 1922 the Mission opened a school, which exists to this day-modified and expanded.  The only part of the original Mission is the church (restored to its original form in the mid-1950s) and its gardens.  A small museum exists today that houses artifacts from the Chumash Indians and items from the mission era of this present day Catholic Church. 

When the meeting is done, I hope to visit the site and take some photos of this interesting historical site.  In the meantime, each night when we pass by the Mission I will imagine all the stories of those who went before me here.