Mission San Juan Bautista is a Christian religious center that was established by Spanish Roman Catholic priests in California. Between 1769 and 1823, Spanish priests started 21 missions as centers for teaching the Indians of California about Christianity. The Franciscan missionary Fermín Lasuén founded the mission on June 24, 1797, in what is now San Juan Bautista, California. The mission was named for Saint John the Baptist. Local Ohlone Indians helped build the mission and were some of its earliest members. The church at Mission San Juan Bautista is the largest of all the mission churches, holding up to 1,000 people.
Mission San Juan Bautista sits almost directly atop the San Andreas Fault—a crack in Earth’s surface that produces many small earthquakes in California every year. The original mission chapel crumbled and cracked and needed constant repairs. Construction on the new church began in 1803 and was completed in 1812. The church has survived numerous earthquakes, including a major one in 1906 that toppled the side walls.
The people at Mission San Juan Bautista produced grain, fruit, leather, soap, wine, and other products for the nearby markets. The mission’s sprawling pastureland held thousands of cattle, horses, and sheep. The mission was famous for its Indian boys’ choir.
In 1833 and 1834, the Mexican government seized and redistributed properties that had belonged to the missions. Mission San Juan Bautista survived, however, as a Roman Catholic parish church, and it has provided uninterrupted service since its founding. The mission’s original convento, or living quarters, has been turned into a museum of the mission’s history. Since the late 1800’s, a number of restoration efforts have sought to preserve the mission’s structures.
