La Purisima Mission

As a New Jersey boy, our history courses in grade school and high school mostly focused on local and regional things, like the American Revolution and maybe a little bit of the Civil War, and then it was time to graduate.  I grew up in the middle of a lot of significant Revolutionary War stuff, with maybe a little Gettysburg thrown in, and our class trips and studies tended to focus accordingly.   What I’m getting at is I had never heard of the California or Baja missions until I moved to California, got married, and had kids.   Then one day my young daughter came home from school and told me she had been assigned a mission.

“To do what,” I asked, thinking it was like getting a mission in the Army.

“San Gabriel,” she answered.

“Huh?” I was a curious and articulate parent.

My daughter patiently explained to her dumb old Dad what the California missions were.  I had never heard of the missions until that day. But I’ve been making up for it ever since.  I never pass on an opportunity to learn more about the Alta California and Baja missions, and it’s a story that’s far more interesting than the stuff I studied in school.

My favorite California mission, hands down, is La Purisima.  It’s the best one there is north of the border.  But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

A bit on the photography first: I shot all the images here with a film camera (a Nikon N70). That’s how long I’ve been stopping in at the La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, California. It’s just a few miles inland off the Pacific Coast Highway. Surprisingly few people know of it, but if you’re planning a trip up the PCH, La Purisima is a must see destination.

This California motorcycle ride occurred as a backup to a plan to dive deep into Baja 20 years ago that just didn’t work out.  Good buddy Paul flew out from New Jersey and rented a Harley in San Diego, and the plan was to ride into Baja to see the whales.  That’s how it started.  I had my ’92 Softail, but it gave up the ghost somewhere around Ensenada.  It happens, I guess.  Paul and I had to turn around and head home.  No problem.  I owned four or five motorcycles in those days (I was like Joe Gresh back then, with lots of hair and lots of motorcycles).  We’d just park my Harley and I’d grab another bike.

Paul had a Harley Fat Boy he rented from EagleRider in San Diego.  It was a motorcycle that worked well for this trip.  It would have been cool if I could have ridden my Harley, too, but on this trip the motorcycles were a two-wheeled odd couple.

I switched over to my Suzuki TL1000S, a bike most people would think was totally unsuited for long-distance motorcycle touring.  But it did the job and it did it well.  I was younger then and I bent easier; I don’t think I could do a long ride on a sportbike today.  The ADV style suits me better.  So does a Subaru Outback, but I digress.

Paul and I rode north on the 101 out of LA a bit and then took California’s 246 west from Buellton.  I had been to the La Purisima Mission before and I wanted to show it to Paul.  It’s not well known as a tourist destination, but it should be. The place is amazing.

La Purisima Mission (Misión La Purísima Concepción De María Santísima, or Mission of the Immaculate Conception of Most Holy Mary) was founded in December of 1787.  It was a good stop and I got some great photos with my old film Nikon.

The 2000-acre La Purisima Mission is one of only two missions in California not run by the Catholic Church, and it is the only one that faithfully recreates a complete historic mission operation.

A bit of background:  La Purisima sort of fell apart starting in the early 1800s.  Things were not going well for Spain in the New World and things were especially not going well for the California missions.  The mission’s enslaved Chumash natives rebelled, smallpox decimated the indigenous population, Mexico won its independence from Spain and disbanded the mission system, and things generally just went to hell in a handbasket if you were the guy running the missions.  The La Purisima property went through several owners. Union Oil bought the place in 1903 and then donated it to California.  A huge research and reconstruction effort commenced, and the La Purisima Mission was opened to the public on December 7, 1941 (yep, the same day as the Pearl Harbor attack). Everything at La Purisima had been resurrected as it existed in 1820, including the furniture, the buildings, and even the adobe bricks made from surrounding soil.

You’ve seen the exterior in the photos above.  Let’s head into the buildings to see what life was like in the late 1700s and early 1800s for the mission inhabitants.

There’s disagreement these days about whether the Spanish mission system provided enlightenment or enslavement for the natives.  The missions were intended to establish a Spanish presence in Alta California.  Spain had claimed Mexico and California (and large parts of the American southwest), but they didn’t really have anyone there watching the store until they started the missions in the second half of the 1700s.  The Spanish had concerns about other nations claiming the territory.  Teach the indigenous people a trade, keep them busy farming and making stuff, and let’s grow it from there.  It didn’t quite work out that way.

If you’re planning that bucket list ride on the Pacific Coast Highway, my advice is to include a stop at the La Purisima Mission.  You’re only about 13 miles inland from the PCH, and it’s too grand a destination to pass without a visit.   You might want to allow a couple of hours to see and photograph this marvelous old place.

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Another word on the images here:  I’m going to use some of them in a story I recently wrote for my favorite motorcycle magazine.  I knew I had these 20-year-old images squirreled away somewhere, but finding them was a challenge.  I finally found the prints, but I couldn’t find the negatives.  After another hour digging through old boxes, I miraculously found them, too.  I thought I’d just have Costco’s photo department scan the negatives for me, and then I thought it might be a good idea to call first and make sure the photo department was open (you know, what with Covid 19 and all).   They were, and I told the photo dude I’d be right over to get my negatives scanned.

“We don’t do that,” he said.

“Yeah, you do,” I answered, figuring I was talking to a new guy who just didn’t know.   “You’ve done it for me before.”

“Sir, we haven’t touched anything with film in years,” he said.

Hmmmmm.  Come to think of it, it had been a while since I’d seen any film for sale in Costco.  And it had been a lot of years since I shot anything on film.

The Costco guy suggested a small mom and pop operation across the street from the Costco store, and that’s where I went.  What you see here are the results of the Photo Factory’s scans (thanks, guys!).

Time marches on, I guess.

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