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The Spanish missions in California formed a series of 21 religious outposts or missions established between 1769 and 1833 in what is now the U.S. state of California. The missions were established by Catholic priests of the Franciscan order to evangelize indigenous peoples backed by the military force of the Spanish Empire. The missions were part of the expansion and settlement of New Spain through the formation of Alta California, expanding the empire into the most northern and western parts of Spanish North America. Civilian settlers and soldiers accompanied missionaries and formed settlements like the Pueblo de Los Ángeles.
Mission Santa Barbara is a Spanish mission in Santa Barbara, California, United States. Often referred to as the 'Queen of the Missions', it was founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén for the Franciscan order on December 4, 1786, the feast day of Saint Barbara, as the tenth mission of what would later become 21 missions in Alta California.
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia is a former Spanish mission in San Luis Rey, a neighborhood in Oceanside, California. This Mission lent its name to the Luiseño tribe of Mission Indians.
Mission San Francisco Solano was the 21st, last, and northernmost mission in Alta California. It was named for Saint Francis Solanus. It was the only mission built in Alta California after Mexico gained independence from Spain. The difficulty of its beginning demonstrates the confusion resulting from that change in governance. The California Governor wanted a robust Mexican presence north of the San Francisco Bay to keep the Russians who had established Fort Ross on the Pacific coast from moving further inland. A young Franciscan friar from Mission San Francisco de Asis wanted to move to a location with a better climate and access to a larger number of potential converts.
Don Pío de Jesús Pico IV was a Californio politician, ranchero, and entrepreneur, famous for serving as the last governor of Alta California under Mexican rule from 1845 to 1846. He briefly held the governorship during a disputed period in 1832. A member of the prominent Pico family of California, he was one of the wealthiest men in California at the time and a hugely influential figure in Californian society, continuing as a citizen of the nascent U.S. state of California.
Californios are Hispanic Californians, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries before California was annexed by the United States. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there since 1683 and is made up of varying Spanish and Mexican origins, including criollos, Mestizos, Indigenous Californian peoples, and small numbers of Mulatos. Alongside the Tejanos of Texas and Neomexicanos of New Mexico and Colorado, Californios are part of the larger Spanish-American/Mexican-American/Hispano community of the United States, which has inhabited the American Southwest and the West Coast since the 16th century. Some may also identify as Chicanos, a term that came about in the 1960s.
The San Antonio de Pala Asistencia, or the "Pala Mission", was founded on June 13, 1816, as an asistencia or "sub-mission" to Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, some twenty miles inland upstream from the latter mission on the San Luis Rey River. Pala Mission was part of the Spanish missions, asistencias, and estancias system in Las Californias—Alta California. Today it is located in the Pala Indian Reservation located in northern San Diego County, with the official name of Mission San Antonio de Pala. It is the only historic mission facility still serving a Mission Indian tribe.
The Las Flores Estancia was established in 1823 as an estancia ("station"). It was part of the Spanish missions, asistencias, and estancias system in Las Californias—Alta California. Las Flores Estancia was situated approximately halfway between Mission San Luis Rey de Francia and Mission San Juan Capistrano. It is located near Bell Canyon on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base ten miles south of the City of San Clemente in northern San Diego County, California. The estancia is also home to the architecturally significant National Historic Landmark Las Flores Adobe, completed in 1868.
The Santa Margarita de Cortona Asistencia was established in 1787 as an asistencia ("sub-mission") to Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, then in the Spanish Las Californias Province. Its site is near the present-day city of Santa Margarita, in San Luis Obispo County, central California.
José María de Echeandía (?–1871) was the Mexican governor of Alta California from 1825 to 1831 and again from 1832 to 1833. He was the only governor of California that lived in San Diego.
Mission Indians was a term used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of California who lived or grew up in the Spanish mission system in California. Today the term is used to refer to their descendants and to specific, contemporary tribal nations in California.
Salomón María Simeon Pico was a Californio, a cousin of former governor Pío Pico, who led a bandit band in the early years following the Mexican–American War in the counties of the central coast of California. Pico was considered by some Californios to be a patriot who opposed the American conquest of Alta California and its subsequent incorporation into the United States. He was hated for his banditry by the newly arrived Americans but protected by some Californios as a defender of his people.
Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando was a 116,858-acre (472.91 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California, granted in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to Eulogio F. de Celis. The grant derives its name from the secularized Mission San Fernando Rey de España, but was called ex-Mission because of a division made of the lands held in the name of the mission—the church retaining the grounds immediately around, and all of the lands outside of this were called ex-Mission lands. The grant encompassed most of the present-day San Fernando Valley.
Rancho Santa Ysabel was a 17,719-acre (71.71 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day San Diego County, California given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to José Joaquín Ortega and Edward Stokes after the Mexican secularization act of 1833. The grant was located in the Santa Ysabel Valley at the northern Cuyamaca Mountains, and encompassed present-day Santa Ysabel.
Rancho Ex-Mission San Buenaventura was a 48,823-acre (197.58 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Ventura County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to José de Arnaz. The grant derives its name from the secularized Mission San Buenaventura, and was called ex-Mission because of a division made of the lands held in the name of the Mission — the church retaining the grounds immediately around, and all of the lands outside of this are called ex-Mission lands. The grant extended east from present day Ventura, excluding the Rancho San Miguel (Olivas) lands, inland up the Santa Clara River to Santa Paula, between the north bank of the River and Sulphur Mountain.
Santiago Argüello (1791–1862) was a Californio, a soldier in the Spanish army of the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Las Californias, a major Mexican land grant ranchos owner, and part of an influential family in Mexican Alta California and post-statehood California.
José Darío María Pico was member of the Pico family of California, an important Californio family to Southern California. He was a soldier in the Company of San Diego since 1782, corporal at Mission San Luis Rey (1798) and sergeant (1805–1818).
The Mexican Secularization Act of 1833, officially called the Decree for the Secularization of the Missions of California, was an act passed by the Congress of the Union of the First Mexican Republic which secularized the Californian missions. The act nationalized the missions, transferring their ownership from the Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church to the Mexican authorities.
The Pico family is a prominent Californio family of Southern California. Members of the family held extensive rancho grants and numerous important positions, including Governor of Alta California, signer of the Constitution of California, and California State Senator, among numerous others. Numerous locations are named after the family across California.
The Battle of San Buenaventura was fought on March 27 and March 28, 1838, between forces representing competing claims to the governorship of California, then a Mexican territory. The opposing forces consisted of supporters of Juan Bautista Alvarado based in Northern California and supporters of Carlos Antonio Carrillo from Southern California. The major action consisted of a cannon siege on the Carrillo loyalists who were encamped at the Mission San Buenaventura in Ventura, California. The Alvarado forces won the battle, as the Carrillo forces fled from the Mission under cover of darkness following the first day of the battle. Most of the Carillo forces were captured the following day at Saticoy, California. One person was killed in the battle, an Alvarado loyalist who was shot by a rifleman stationed in the Mission's bell tower.