California Mission aficionados, or travelers in search of peace and tranquility, will find what they’re looking for at La Purisima Mission near Lompoc California
At La Purisima Concepcion, the time clock turns back more than 200 years to reveal California mission life as it really was. A fresh breeze moves the gray-green olive trees. Burros munch on thatches of new grass. The campanario bells ring out across the valley.
The most completely restored of the 21 missions built during Junipero Serra’s 54-year evangelizing effort, La Purisima was founded in 1787 – 11th in the chain which stretched from San Diego to Sonoma.
The Mission’s Renaissance
Today, thanks to the California State Park System, an oil company and the Great Depression, it can be ranked with Colombia and San Juan Bautista as one of the state’s most important historic parks. The mission passed from church hands in 1845 when it was sold at auction for $1100. Ten years later, it was restored to the church. In 1883, it again became privately owned and the buildings decayed. In 1933, the property, then owned by Union Oil, was deeded by the company to Santa Barbara county. The state acquired the land in 1935, enlarged the holdings to 980 acres and made it an historic monument. Labor for the restoration was provided by the depressing-spawned Civilian Conservation Corps.
Restoration Results
The restoration job was remarkably accurate. Even the colors of the buildings are authentic, reproduced with local materials carefully matched in physical and chemical composition to color chips found amid the mission ruins. Renovated buildings include the church, soldieres’ quarters and shops, padres’ residence, Indian dormitories and infirmaries.
An olive press, the original soap vats, tallow works ruins, grain mill and bakery give mute testimony to the dictum that although the primary purpose of the missions was conversion of the Indians, each of the religious compounds was expected to be self sustaining economically. Hides tanned and blankets woven at La Purisima were traded for items which the mission could not produce.
Mission Garden Melange
Although irrigated by the original water system, the mission garden itself is not a genuine reproduction, but rather a composite of all the mission gardens. Cuttings from plants growing at the other Franciscan settlements were used to start the fig, pear, pepper and pomegranate trees, as well as the grape vines and Castillian roses. Plants used by the Fathers and Indians for food, fibre or medicine, native plants and species introduced to California by the missionaries are also included in the botanical display. The animals in the old pens beside the mission trail are representative of the proselytizing era, too.
Unlike many of the other missions, La Purisima has not been totally swallowed up by urbanization. Located in La Canada de los Berros (The Canyon of the Watercress), four miles northeast of Lompoc, parts of the surrounding countryside are almost as peacefully pastoral as they were in the late eighteenth century. Even the ruts of old El Camino Real remain.
