Mission San Juan Bautista is a Spanish mission in San Juan Bautista, San Benito County, California. Founded on June 24, 1797, by Fermín de Lasuén of the Franciscan order, the mission was the fifteenth of the Spanish missions established in present-day California. Named for Saint John the Baptist, the mission is the namesake of the city of San Juan Bautista.

Barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, the Plaza Hotel and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and can be seen today in their original form. The Ohlone, the original residents of the valley, were brought to live at the mission and baptized, followed by Yokuts from the Central Valley. Mission San Juan Bautista has served mass daily since 1797, and today functions as a parish church of the Diocese of Monterey.

History

thumb|left|The church [[chancel with Easter decoration]]

thumb|A photograph of Mission San Juan Bautista taken between 1880 and 1910. The steeple (far right), constructed after the mission was secularized, was subsequently destroyed in a fire.

thumb|Aerial view of Mission San Juan Bautista

Following its creation in 1797, San Juan's population grew quickly. By 1803, there were 1,036 Native Americans living at the mission. Ranching and farming activity had moved apace, with 1,036 cattle, 4,600 sheep, 22 swine, 540 horses and 8 mules counted that year. At the same time, the harvest of wheat, barley and corn was estimated at 2,018 fanegas, each of about 220 pounds.

thumb|175 px|Entrance Bell

Father Pedro Estévan Tápis (who had a special talent for music) joined Father Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta, at Mission San Juan Bautista in 1815 to teach singing to the Native Americans. He employed a system of notation developed in Spain that uses varied colors or textures for polyphonic music, usually (from bottom to top) solid black, solid red, black outline (sometimes solid yellow) and red outline (or black outline when yellow was used). His choir of Native American boys performed for many visitors, earning the San Juan Bautista Mission the nickname "the Mission of Music." Two of his handwritten choir books are preserved at the San Juan Bautista Museum. When Father Tapis died in 1825 he was buried on the mission grounds. The town of San Juan Bautista, which grew up around the mission, expanded rapidly during the California Gold Rush and continues to be a thriving community today.

thumb|Water well in mission grounds

The mission is situated adjacent to the San Andreas Fault, and has suffered damage from numerous earthquakes, such as those of 1800 and 1906. However, the mission was never entirely destroyed at once. It was restored initially in 1884, and then again in 1949 with funding from the Hearst Foundation. The three-bell campanario, or "bell wall," located by the church entrance, was fully restored in 2010. An unpaved stretch of the original El Camino Real, just east of the mission, lies on a fault scarp.

Although initially secularized in 1835, the church was reconsecrated by the Catholic Church in 1859, and continues to serve as a parish of the Diocese of Monterey. The mission includes a cemetery, with the remains of over 4,000 Native American converts and Europeans buried there.

thumb|Cemetery gate

thumb|Cemetery grounds

The mission and its grounds were featured prominently in the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo. Associate producer Herbert Coleman's daughter Judy Lanini suggested the mission to Hitchcock as a filming location. A steeple, added sometime after the mission's original construction and secularization, had been demolished following a fire, so Hitchcock added a bell tower using scale models, matte paintings, and trick photography at the Paramount studio in Los Angeles. The tower does not resemble the original steeple. The tower's staircase was assembled inside a studio.

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File:Entrance to San Juan Bautista Mission church 2022.jpg|Entrance to church

File:San Juan Bautista Mission lounge 2022.jpg|Lounge

File:San Juan Bautista Mission dining hall 2022.jpg|Dining hall

</Gallery>

See also

  • Spanish missions in California
  • List of Spanish missions in California
  • Rancho San Justo
  • Teatro Campesino
  • USNS Mission San Juan (AO-126) – a Buenaventura Class fleet oiler built during World War II.

References

Sources

  • Early photographs, sketches, land surveys of Mission San Juan Bautista, via Calisphere, California Digital Library
  • Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) documentation, filed under San Juan Bautista, San Benito County, CA:
  • Historic American Landscapes Survey (HABS) documentation, filed under San Juan Bautista, San Benito County, CA:
  • Another view of the Mission Facade, circa 1980s