San Juan Bautista Things to Do

4 more images

Go to my main page for complete details, but basically the San Juan Bautista Mission retains the original setting by an unpaved section of the Camino Real. The Chapel while less ornate than other missions, it is not overly restored, has the original surrounding buildings, and the graveyard isn't filled with so many settler tombstones. The Mission grounds have picnic tables, and the mission museum and gift shop are pleasantly uncrowded.

4 more images

Begun 1797, the Mission at San Juan Bautista was the 15th of the 21 Spanish missions in California. The current church building was built from 1803 to 1812, and today it hosts a small museum, gift shop, and an active church. You will also find a neat little garden with an amazing variety of plants and a cemetery out back, laid right beside the El Camino Real and almost on top of the San Andreas Fault.

Admission is $4.

1 more image

In San Juan Bautista, sections of the original El Camino Real exist in their original location with a packed earth surface. Just below the mission is a small stretch of the road.

El Camino Real--the King's Highway--is a series of roads from San Diego to San Francisco which connected Spain's 21 missions, 3 pueblos (or towns located in LA, San Jose, & Santa Cruz plus a 4th established by Mexico in Sonoma), & 4 presidios (at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco) along the California coast. The first outpost on this trail--San Diego--was established in 1769 while the final mission at Sonoma was completed in 1823.

The missions were religious centers, run by a priest, for the purpose of converting the native population to Christianity. The presidios' main function was a strategic military fortification and barracks, primarily to prevent competing colonial claims from Britain or Russia along the California Coast. The pueblos were designed as towns to provide food & other support to the military presidios. The last piece of the intricate colonial structure of the Spanish was the ranchos which consisted of some 800 private plots of land land used for farming.

The modern El Camino Real is marked every 1-2 miles by a bell hung from a bent guidepost with a small sign reading "Historic El Camino Real." There are about 600 bells along the route today as it traverses parts of 14 different California roads, but most of the El Camino is US-101, I-280, and I-5.

3 more images

The San Andreas Fault runs about 800 miles along the coast of California and has been the source of the state's most devastating earthquakes including the 1906 San Francisco quake and the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. This fault line separates two tectonic plates, the western-most slowly moving northwest and the eastern plate shifting south. When the plates "catch" on each other and temporarily stop moving, an earthquake is likely.

The San Andreas fault runs along the edge of San Juan Bautista, close to the old El Camino Real just below the mission. The 1906 earthquake destroyed some of the walls of the church, but they were restored and strengthened in 1976. Inside the church museum you will find a drum recorder seismograph which records movements of the plates in an attempt to accurately measure and predict future earthquakes.

4 more images

The San Juan Bautista State Historic Park covers many of the historic structures of downtown San Juan Bautista except for the mission which is run by the catholic church. The main park areas include the Plaza in front of the mission and all of the surrounding buildings: the Plaza Hotel, Plaza Hall, Castro-Breen Adobe, Plaza Stable, Vicky Cottage, the old town jail, a blacksmith shop, and a cabin. Entrance to the park is $2, but you can see the outsides of all of these buildings for free.

I'm not a great fan of antiques and art galleries per se, but San Juan Bautista has enough to keep those who are busy browsing for an hour or two. The web link below is the city's main page. They should have all the details one might need. I just enjoy walking along the authentic wooden sidewalks.

4 more images

Hollister was founded in 1858 and was originally intended to be named San Justo. According to local lore, some of the locals objected due to the fact that saints had a monopoly on city names in California, so they should name the town after someone less holy. Apparently William Welles Hollister was no saint....

Today the town is a mid-sized farming community with about 35,000 residents and is known for sitting astride part of the San Andreas Fault and for its annual Independence Day Motorcycle Rally (which was canceled in 2006).

Hollister is just a few miles east of San Juan Bautista along State Route 152. Between the two towns is some beautiful farmland in the Salinas Valley.

3 more images

The area in from of San Juan Bautista Mission chapel has a large rose garden that I didn't even notice when I visited in the winter. But when I returned in July, the fragrant roses of all colors were in full bloom. They created a beautiful setting for this historic mission and the nearby farming valley.

Today many of the California Missions have rose gardens near the historic chapels.