Mission San Juan Bautista
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- Other missions bearing the name San Juan Bautista include the Misión San Juan Bautista Malibat (Misión Liguí) in Baja California Sur and the Misión San Juan Bautista in Coahuila, Mexico.
A view of the restored Mission San Juan Bautista and its added three-bell campanario ("bell wall") in 2004. Two of the bells were salvaged from the original chime, which was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. |
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Location | San Juan Bautista, California |
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Name as Founded | La Misión del Glorios Precursor de Jesu Cristo, Nuestro Señor San Juan Bautista [1] |
English Translation | The Mission of Saint John the Baptist |
Patron | Saint John the Baptist [2] |
Nickname(s) | "Mission of Music" [3] |
Founding Date | June 24, 1797 [4] |
Founding Priest(s) | Father Fermín Lasuén [5] |
Founding Order | Fifteenth [2] |
Military District | Third [6] |
Native Tribe(s) Spanish Name(s) |
Mutsun, Yokuts Costeño |
Native Place Name(s) | Popeloutchom [7] |
Baptisms | 4,106 [8] |
Marriages | 1,003 [8] |
Burials | 2,854 [8] |
Secularized | 1835 [2] |
Returned to the Church | 1859 [2] |
Governing Body | Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey |
Current Use | Parish Church |
Coordinates | |
California Historical Landmark | #195 |
Web Site | http://www.oldmissionsjb.org/ |
Mission San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797 at the present-day location of San Juan Bautista, California. Barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, 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 converted and brought to live at the Mission, followed by Yokuts from the Central Valley. Mission San Juan Bautista has served mass daily since 1797.
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[edit] Precontact
The current prevailing theory postulates that Paleo-Indians entered the Americas from Asia via a land bridge called "Beringia" that connected eastern Siberia with present-day Alaska (when sea levels were significantly lower, due to widespread glaciation) between about 15,000 to 35,000 years ago. The remains of Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of a very early habitation in California, dated to the last ice age (Wisconsin glaciation) about 13,000 years ago. The first humans are therefore thought to have made their homes among the southern valleys of California's coastal mountain ranges some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago; the earliest of these people are known only from archaeological evidence.[9] The cultural impacts resulting from climactic changes and other natural events during this broad expanse of time were negligible; conversely, European contact was a momentous event, which profoundly affected California's native people.[10]
[edit] History
Father Pedro Estévan Tápis (who had a special talent for music) joined Father de la Cuesta at Mission San Juan Bautista in 1815 to teach singing to the Indians. He created a system using colors for different types of music notes which made it easier for the novices to follow. 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. The structures suffered extensive damage in the earthquakes of 1800 and 1906; the Mission was restored initially 1884, and then again in 1949 with funding from the Hearst Foundation, and today continues to serve as a parish of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Monterey.
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 Pictures studio in Los Angeles. The Mission was built on the San Andreas Fault and has suffered damage from numerous earthquakes over the years, but it has never been demolished. An unpaved stretch of the original El Camino Real, just east of the Mission, lies on a fault scarp.[11]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Bennett 1897b, p. 153
- ^ a b c d Krell, p. 241
- ^ Ruscin, p. 121
- ^ Yenne, p. 132
- ^ Ruscin, p. 196
- ^ Forbes, p. 202
- ^ Ruscin, p. 195
- ^ a b c Krell, p. 315: as of December 31, 1832; information adapted from Engelhardt's Missions and Missionaries of California.
- ^ Paddison, p. 333: The first undisputable archaeological evidence of human presence in California dates back to circa 8,000 BCE.
- ^ Jones and Klar 2005, p. 53: "Understanding how and when humans first settled California is intimately linked to the initial colonization of the Americas."
- ^ Robert Iacopi, Earthquake Country (Menlo Park:Lane Publishing, 1964, 1971)
[edit] References
- Bennett, John E. (February 1897b). "Should the California Missions Be Preserved? - Part II". Overland Monthly XXIX (170): 150-161.
- Forbes, Alexander (1839). California: A History of Upper and Lower California. Smith, Elder and Co., Cornhill, London.
- Jones, Terry L. and Kathryn A. Klar (eds.) (2007). California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. Altimira Press, Landham, MD. ISBN 0-759-10872-2.
- Krell, Dorothy (ed.) (1979). The California Missions: A Pictorial History. Sunset Publishing Corporation, Menlo Park, CA. ISBN 0-376-05172-8.
- Leffingwell, Randy (2005). California Missions and Presidios: The History & Beauty of the Spanish Missions. Voyageur Press, Inc., Stillwater, MN. ISBN 0-89658-492-5.
- Levy, Richard. (1978). in William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer: Handbook of North American Indians. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. ISBN 0-16-004578-9 / 0160045754, page 486.
- Milliken, Randall (1995). A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1910. Ballena Press Publication, Menlo Park, CA. ISBN 0-87919-132-5.
- Paddison, Joshua (ed.) (1999). A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush. Heyday Books, Berkeley, CA. ISBN 1-890771-13-9.
- Ruscin, Terry (1999). Mission Memoirs. Sunbelt Publications, San Diego, CA. ISBN 0-932653-30-8.
- Yenne, Bill (2004). The Missions of California. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, CA. ISBN 1-59223-319-8.
[edit] See also
- USNS Mission San Juan (AO-126) — a Buenaventura Class fleet oiler built during World War II.
- Rancho San Justo
- Teatro Campesino
[edit] External links
- Early photographs, sketches, land surveys of Mission San Juan Bautista, via Calisphere, California Digital Library
- Vertigo at the Internet Movie Database
California missions |
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San Diego de Alcalá (1769) · San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (1770) · San Antonio de Padua (1771) · San Gabriel Arcángel (1771) · San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (1772) · San Francisco de Asís (1776) · San Juan Capistrano (1776) · Santa Clara de Asís (1777) · San Buenaventura (1782) · Santa Barbara (1786) · La Purísima Concepción (1787) · Santa Cruz (1791) · Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (1791) · San José (1797) · San Juan Bautista (1797) · San Miguel Arcángel (1797) · San Fernando Rey de España (1797) · San Luis Rey de Francia (1798) · Santa Inés (1804) · San Rafael Arcángel (1817) · San Francisco Solano (1823) Asistencias Estancias |