Adventure 49/101, Mission 07 - Mission San Fernando

Capture California, the Game-2012

Adventure: 101 - 07 : Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana, 17th mission

Team: Thing One, Thing Two

Date:  August 13, 2012

Location: Mission Hills

Description:

Mission San Fernando was the mission to be visited today. When we got to the mission, it was the least inviting and friendly. Going into the parking lot, you could not see the actual mission because of a very high wall. Then a solid 12' gate blocked any view. When we saw the admission price was $10 a person, we decided that we would enjoy another mission.

From Wikipedia site:

Prior to the establishment of the missions, the native peoples knew only how to utilize bone, seashells, bush, and wood for building, tool making, weapons, and so forth. The missionaries discovered that the Indians, who regarded labor as degrading to the masculine sex, had to be taught industry in order to learn how to be self-supportive. The result was the establishment of a great manual training school that comprised agriculture, the mechanical arts, and the raising and care of livestock. Everything consumed and otherwise utilized by the natives was produced at the missions under the supervision of the padres; thus, the neophytes not only supported themselves, but after 1811 sustained the entire military and civil government of California.

From California Missions Resource Center site:

Mission Bells: A bell hangs in the belfry of the church. Another bell, weighing 100 pounds and dated to 1796, bears inscriptions for both Mission San Fernando and a Russian Orthodox Church official of the island of Kodiak, Alaska. It is believed by some that the bell originated with Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov's 1806 Russian trading expedition to Alta California.

Mission Art: The elaborate altar, reredos and pulpit are carved from walnut and date to 1687. They were originally installed in the chapel of St. Philip Neri at Ezcaray, Spain, and reassembled in part at San Fernando by California missions curator Sir Richard Joseph Menn of the Diocese of Monterey.

Significant Event(s): On March 8, 1842 Francisco Lopez, a majordomo on one of the mission ranches, discovered gold particles clinging to the roots of wild onion bulbs in Placerita Canyon. The gold petered out in four years, but this was the earliest gold strike in California. For years thereafter, treasure seekers dug up the mission's adobe walls and floors to find the gold they mistakenly thought the padres had hidden.

From California State Parks site:

Father Lasuen named this mission in honor of King Ferdinand III of Spain in 1797. Located 25 miles north of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, the convento is the largest freestanding adobe in California, and was originally used as a hospice for travelers. Today, the church, school, convento and workshops have all been restored to their original purposes and are open for viewing. Above the church altar is a statue of Saint Ferdinand brought from Spain 300 years ago. In the old mission plaza sits the original flower-shaped fountain.
15151 San Fernando Mission Blvd., Mission Hills, 91345, (818) 361-0186