Mission
San Luis Obispo de Tolosa was named after Saint Louis (no, not the city) who
was the Bishop of Toulouse in France and was founded in 1769. Let’s stop there.
“Founded” merely meant a prayer was said, a cross stuck into the ground and
that was pretty much it. The Spanish who controlled California used the chain
of missions to not only bring religion to the New World, but the missions acted
as trading posts in the once rugged and desolate California landscape.
But
hang on. Why here exactly? On September 7 and 8, 1769 Gaspar de Portola and his
expedition traveled through San Luis Obispo on their way to the Monterey Bay.
The expedition’s diarist, Padre Juan Crespi, recorded the name given to this
area by the soldiers as “llano de los
Osos” or the “bear plain,” as there used to be a whole hell of a lotta
bears here. In fact, Los Osos, just west of San Luis Obispo, still holds that
name.
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| Father Serra and the SLO Mission |
Skip
forward to 1770 and Father Serra founded Mission San Carlos Borremeo in
Monterey (it was moved to Carmel the following year.) As the Monterey mission’s
supplies dwindled in 1772 soldiers, padres and Native Indians faced starvation.
Remembering the bear plain where they had stuck a cross into the dry earth
years before, a hunting expedition was sent to San Luis Obispo to bring back
food in the summer of 1772. Over 25 mule loads of bear meat was sent up coast to the Carmel Mission. It was after
this that Father Serra decided that San Luis Obispo would be the ideal place
for a fifth mission. The region had abundant supplies of food and water, the
climate was mild, and the local Chumash were very friendly, until, you know,
they were enslaved. Given these conditions, Father Serra set out on a journey
to reach the bear plain and on September 1, 1772, he celebrated the first mass
near San Luis Creek.
After
Father Serra left, the task of building the mission remained which was
accomplished primarily by the hard work of the local Chumash Indians – as in
cheap labor. The church and priest's residence were built by 1794, and other
structures made up the primitive mission in the early days, namely storerooms,
residences for single women called a “monjerio,” barracks and a few
mills. The
mission also used the land for farming and raising livestock since all missions
depended upon whatever they produced for their survival. Expansion proceeded
for a few years due to the prosperity of the mission, but those days were
numbered and Mission San Luis, like all the other missions, gradually fell into
disrepair in part because Spain stopped sending money to fund the California
missions. When Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 the missions were “secularized,”
decommissioned as it were, and often mission lands were sold off. Governor Pio
Pico sold the San Luis Obispo Mission to
Captain John Wilson for a mere $510 in 1845, about $15,500 in today’s dollars,
still a seal (though the actual church was not included in the deal). The
building served multiple functions, even as a jail and the first county
courthouse. It was returned to the Catholic Church in 1859.
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| A photo of a photo, but historically cool |
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| Still an active church the mission is open daily |
Today
the mission fronts Mission Square (where parts of the Sandra Bullock film, Murder
by Numbers was shot – no pun intended) facing the creek, and Higuera
St. The courtyard is a popular place for small gatherings and festivals. The
interior of the mission is minimally decorated, mainly hand painted. The
whitewashed interior walls of the church are enlivened by a brilliantly hued “vine of life,” a reproduction of the
original decor. The original floors were packed earth back in the day, colored
red with cinnabar. Now of course it’s colored concrete. Still an active church,
mass is held each day at 7 a.m.
A
visit to the mission museum will set you back $3, and it’s worth the cost. The
original mission doors are located, ironically, inside the museum on display and
were used up until 1948. The museum is surprisingly large but it’s not all mission
era stuff on display here. There is a good number of Indian artifacts; bowls
and baskets, jewelry, pottery arrowheads and abalone shell pottery. There are
mission-era vestments the padres wore, church artifacts and early 19th century
clothes and personal belongings once the Westerners moved in to this region There
are quite a few adobe cut-outs so you can see the exposed brick. The outside
gardens are intimate with a water-well located center overlooked by Madonna Mountain. Clearly modernized
landscaping with little green lawns does not reflect what it actually would
have looked like and the mission itself is surrounded by Australian Eucalyptus
trees.
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| A lonely portion of one of the original walls |
For
you true history buffs, walk across the street to the historical society
building and there, barely seen or known about is part of the original mission
wall – just a small chunk of authentic history waiting for someone to notice it.
(MISSION SAN LUIS OBISPO, 751 Palm St., San Luis Obispo, 805/781-8220)
