Mission Santa Cruz

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Mission Santa Cruz

The half-size Mission Santa Cruz replica
Location	126 High St Santa Cruz, California 95060
Name as founded	La Misión de la Exaltación de la Santa Cruz [1]
English translation	The Mission of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Patron	The Exaltation of the Cross [2]
Founding date	September 25, 1791 [3]
Founding priest(s)	Father Fermín Lasuén [4]
Founding Order	Twelfth[2]
Military district	Fourth[5]
Native tribe(s) Spanish name(s)	Awaswas / Ohlone, Yokuts Costeño
Native place name(s)	Uypi [6]
Baptisms	11 [7]
Marriages	11 [7]
Burials	11 [7]
Secularized	1834[2]
Governing body	Catholic Diocese of Monterey
Current use	Chapel and Museum
Coordinates	36°58′41.2206″N 122°1′45.8394″W / 36.978116833°N 122.029399833°W / 36.978116833; -122.029399833
California Historical Landmark	#342
Website
Mission Hill Area Historic District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
Location:	Mission Street
Coordinates:	36°58′39″N 122°1′43″W / 36.9775°N 122.02861°W / 36.9775; -122.02861Coordinates: 36°58′39″N 122°1′43″W / 36.9775°N 122.02861°W / 36.9775; -122.02861
Area:	38 acres (15 ha)
Architectural style:	Spanish Colonial, Stick-Eastlake-Queen Anne—Victorian
NRHP Reference#:	76000530[8]
Added to NRHP:	May 17, 1976

Mission Santa Cruz was a Spanish mission founded by the Franciscan order in present-day Santa Cruz, California. The mission was founded in 1791 and named for the feast of the Exultation of the Cross, the name that the explorer Gaspar de Portolà gave to the area when he camped on the banks of the San Lorenzo River on October 17, 1769, and erected a wooden cross.^[3] As with the other California missions, Mission Santa Cruz served as a site for ecclesiastical conversion of natives, first the Ohlone, the original inhabitants of the region, and later the Yokuts from the east. The settlement was the site of the first autopsy in Alta California.^[4]

The current Holy Cross Church was built on the site of the original mission church in 1889, and it remains an active parish of the Diocese of Monterey. A half-size replica of the original mission church was built near the mission site in the 1930s and functions as a chapel of Holy Cross Church. Today's Plaza Park occupies the same location as the original plaza, at the center of the former Mission complex. The complex at one time included as many as 32 buildings. The only surviving mission building, a dormitory for native acolytes, has been restored to its original appearance and functions as a museum of the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park.

History

Inside the half-size mission replica chapel with exposed wood vigas (beams)

The Santa Cruz mission was originally consecrated by Padre Fermin Lasuen on August 28, 1791,^[9] on the San Lorenzo river's flood plain. It was one of the smaller missions, in the fourth military district under protection of the Presidio of San Francisco.^[5] The mission was flooded as the San Lorenzo swelled with the rains that winter. Over the next two years, the padres set out to rebuild the mission on the hill overlooking the river. The night of December 14, 1793, Mission Santa Cruz was attacked and partially burned by members of the Quirosto tribe who inhabited the mountains to the east of Point Año Nuevo. The attack was purportedly motivated by the forced relocation of Indians to the Mission. On October 12, 1812, Father Andrés Quintana was beaten to death and his body disfigured by natives angry over his use of a metal-tipped whip in the punishment of mission laborers.

In 1797, the secular pueblo (town) of Branciforte was founded across the San Lorenzo River to the east of Mission Santa Cruz. The mission padres did not welcome the location of the pueblo so close to the mission, and accused the Branciforte settlers of gambling, smuggling and tempting the native acolytes to desert the mission. In 1818, the Mission received advance warning of an attack by the Argentine corsair (simply a pirate, from the Spanish point-of-view) Hipólito Bouchard and was evacuated.^[10] The citizens of Branciforte, several of whom were retired soldiers, were asked to protect the Mission's valuables; instead, they were later accused of looting.

Decline and preservation

Holy Cross Church, circa 1900

The front wall of the adobe mission, built in 1794, was destroyed by earthquakes in 1857. A wooden facade was added and the structure converted to other uses. A new wooden church was built next door in 1858.^[11] In 1889, the current Gothic style Holy Cross Church was built on the original adobe site. The only original Mission building left is a long multi-room building which at one time housed local Yokut and Ohlone Indian families. There is also a protected remnant of the mission church foundation wall behind the current Holy Cross Church. The parish address is 126 High Street. The road leading to the mission from the west is called Mission Street, which is also part of California State Route 1.

In 1931, Gladys Sullivan Doyle proposed to construct a half-size replica of the original Mission. She contributed all of the construction costs, on the condition that she be allowed to be buried inside. Her grave can be viewed in a small side room. The small replica chapel is mainly used for private services. An adjoining room functions as a gift shop. A stone fountain from the original mission complex stands in the garden behind the gift shop.

Santa Cruz Mission Historic Park and District

The only surviving original adobe mission building, a dormitory for Indian residents, has been restored as part of the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park as the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe.^[12] The Santa Cruz Mission is designated California Historical Landmark number 342 .^[13] The Neary-Rodriguez Adobe was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Santa Cruz County, California as site number 75000484 on February 24, 1975, and the Mission Hill Area as a United States Historic District as site number 76000530 on May 17, 1976.^[8]

Notes

See also

• USNS Mission Santa Cruz (AO-133) — a Buenaventura Class fleet oiler built during World War II.

References

• Forbes, Alexander (1839). California: A History of Upper and Lower California. Smith, Elder and Co., Cornhill, London. http://books.google.com/books?id=NH4FAAAAQAAJ. 
• Jones, Terry L. and Kathryn A. Klar (eds.) (2007). California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. Altimira Press, Landham, MD. ISBN 0-7591-0872-2. 
• 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). William C. Sturtevant, and Robert F. Heizer. ed. Handbook of North American Indians. 8 (California). 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. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mission Santa Cruz

• Official Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park website
• Official parish website
• Elevation & Site Layout sketches of the Mission proper
• Early photographs, sketches, land surveys of Mission Santa Cruz, via Calisphere, California Digital Library