Mission San Juan Bautista

Mission San Juan Bautista is the fifteenth of the twenty-one California Missions to be built.  The largest of the missions, Mission San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797.  Church services continue even today as we visit.  This is my favorite Mission so far. 

After the mission’s founding, the mission’s earliest buildings were constructed by local indigenous peoples, presidio soldiers and individuals from Mexico who had adopted the Hispanic culture.  The portion of the mission used as a church today was built beginning in 1803 when its cornerstone was laid.  The church was dedicated in 1812 but the interior was not fully completed until 1817 when the floor was tiled and the main altar including the ornamental screen (a reredos) holding six statutes covering the wall behind the altar was completed.  Interestingly, an American sailor from Boston who jumped ship in Monterey named Thomas Doak did the finishing work on the interior in exchange for room and board.

Some interesting features of the Mission:

•         The Mission sits atop the San Andreas Fault.
•      Every December 21^st the main altar tabernacle is illuminated by the light of the midwinter solstice.
•         Alfred Hitchcock chose the Mission as the setting for his movie Vertigo-filmed in 1957 starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.
•          Survivors of the Donner Party tragedy, the Breen family, were given a temporary home at the Mission.
•         At one time the mission served three meals a day to 1200 people.

The rose gardens of today once served as the center of church activity where carpentry, tanning, weaving and candle making were undertaken.  Cats were welcomed allies in the Mission for controlling mice and were provided with their very own “cat door” which was carved into one of the side doors to the church.  Originally the garden was completely enclosed by a quadrangle of connected buildings.  Outside the Mission, the only surviving Spanish Plaza remaining in California borders the north side of the church.  Even today as church services are in progress, people stroll the plaza and children bound across its grass.

Reading through the literature on the Mission, it will warrant a return visit to see some of the nuances we missed on our first trip.  History is truly a stimulus to imagination walking these grounds and imagining the peoples who came before us doing the same as they carried out their daily lives within these walls.