Several of us have been towing our Jeeps this whole trip so today three Jeeps took off to find the San Francisco de Borja Mission deep in the mountains behind Los Angeles. Jeff & Tina, Allan and Gloria and John and I with passengers Debi and Phil packed our lunches and spent the day riding on 25 miles of really rough gravel roads. But the effort was well worth the trip.
The mission was first established in 1662 by some San Franciscan monks to bring Christ to the natives of the peninsula. If you look at a map, you can see a trail that ran down the center of the Baja with missions all along it. This was one of the most northern ones. In 1746 a Jesuit priest discovered the mission and tried to find a shorter trail from there to the Sea in order to expedite a supply route. That is how Los Angeles was established. Then in late 1700’s the Dominican priests began building a new church at the mission and completed it in 1801. That is what we saw today. It is a very simply decorated building which shows off its architectural beauty.
There is only one family near the church to care for it and to make a living. They had nice shaded palapas where we had our lunch, clean bathrooms and in the distance we could see orchards and planted fields. Alicia, the caretaker, showed us the building and tried answering our questions but she had very limited English. The church had a small museum, and several rooms off to the side had been used for classrooms at one time and one held pictures of the 200 year anniversary of the mission. The really old, original adobe building has a few walls still standing near the back of the church.
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