ROOTED IN PURPOSE | MISSION SAN JUAN BAUTISTA
National Park Service Grant Helps Mission San Juan Bautista Continue to Stand Strong
Mission San Juan Preservation Fund and Gilroy Morhgan Hill TODAY
Roughly 100,000 people walk through the doors of Mission San Juan Bautista every year. Fourth graders come on field trips. Couples get married there. Parishioners show up for Sunday Mass, and movie buffs still make the pilgrimage to see where Jimmy Stewart trailed Kim Novak in Hitchcock ' s Vertigo. Spend enough time inside, though, and someone will eventually mention the one detail that has shaped the building ' s entire history. It sits almost directly on top of the San Andreas Fault.
San Juan Bautista is the fifteenth of California ' s 21 missions. Founded in 1797, it is the largest of the mission churches, and the only one with its original plaza still intact. The surrounding plaza became a state park in 1933, and the historic district was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970. Nicknamed the Mission of Music in the 1800s, it has held Mass continuously since it was founded, making it one of the oldest active parishes in the state. It is the main visitor attraction and center of the community of San Juan Bautista.
Images by Mission San Juan Bautista Preservation Fund and Gilroy Morgan Hill TODAY
The years have not been easy on the building. Around 1800, a series of earthquakes destroyed the original 1797 church and the convento( the rectory and living quarters, now the Mission Museum). A larger, three-aisle church went up in their place, but it took nine years and tens of thousands of hand-formed adobe bricks and roof tiles to finish. The new church was finally dedicated on June 23, 1812. However, within months another earthquake
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