Besides wheat, livestock—including Palomino horses—were raised at the mission.

After an earthquake struck in 1812, the mission was rebuilt four miles (six kilometers) to the northwest. The mission continued to prosper with more than 20,000 cattle and sheep at times in addition to shops for weaving, pottery, and leatherwork.

Explore all of California’s 21 famed missions >> By 1829, the mission had 25,000 head of cattle, 15,000 sheep, perhaps the largest vineyard in Spanish California, and abundant crops of wheat, barley, corn, beans, peas, lentils and garbanzos. The families and soldiers who founded Los Angeles came from here in 1781.

The mission bells set the rhythm of life for all who lived at the missions. All through the day the mission bells rang, announcing that it was time to go to church, time for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, time to work, or time to rest.

Crops included maize (corn), beans, chile, squash, melons, cotton, and sugar cane. Orchards produced apples, peaches, grapes and other fruits. Each mission had an acequia. This system of gravity-fed irrigation ditches brought water diverted from the river by means of a dam to the fields and orchards.

Bells were used in the missions to call everyone to the church for services starting at sunrise, to communicate the time of day and to regulate daily life in the community.

Acorns, seeds, bulbs, roots and nuts were seasonal staples, as was wild game, including bears, seals, otters, shellfish, deer and rabbits. Chumash homes called ‘ap ‘ap, are constructed of local plant materials.

Other jobs included carpentry, building, weaving and leather-working. Padres, or religious leaders, oversaw the mission. They were assigned six soldiers to protect them and the mission properties.

Juaneño

Mission San Diego de Alcalá

San Gabriel Mission is one of the best preserved in California, with many of its original features still intact, including six altar statues brought around the Horn of Africa in 1791 and a hammered copper baptismal font, a gift from King Carlos III of Spain in 1771.

Pride of the Alta California Missions

When the Franciscans established the Mission San Gabriel in the late 1700s, they did so with the intent of converting the nearby Indians and teaching them useful skills-that is, weaving, spinning, farming and other skills typical of a European lifestyle.

The San Gabriel Mission, named after the Archangel Gabriel, was designed by Spaniard Antonio Cruzado, whose designs such as tall, narrow windows and capped buttresses are unique among the California missions.

John David Corey

July 11

250c. 1771

listen), Spanish: Alhambra) is a city located in the western San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, United States, approximately eight miles from the Downtown Los Angeles civic center….

site after “four years and eight months!’ Hbid. *Ibid.

San Juan Capistrano, 7th mission Named for Crusader Saint John of Capistrano and designed in the shape of a cross, the great stone church once held seven domes and a bell tower so tall it could be seen from ten miles away.