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Overview

This Roman Catholic mission complex, a self-sufficient religious community founded around a main church in 1793, operated for about 64 years. Operated by the Franciscan Order within the Catholic Church, the missions relied on the labor of local Ohlone and Yokuts Indians who were impressed into service in exchange for the salvation of their souls. Earthquakes in 1857 destroyed the original structures of adobe, a masonry building (compacted earthen bricks) material that does not perform at all well in temblors, unless firmly reinforced. A wooden church was built in 1858 to replace the one lost.

Building History

Father Fermín de Francisco Lasuén de Arasqueta (1736-1803) established the Mission Santa Cruz #1 on 08/25/1791, the twelfth of the twenty-one missions in CA. Flooding of the San Lorenzo River washed this first mission site away in the winter of 1791. This second mission was erected on higher ground nearby in 1793. In the early 1800s, the mission complex included about 32 buildings. All 21 of the California missions had their properties secularized in 1834, under the new Mexican Governor José Figueroa (1792-1835). The Gothic Revival Holy Cross Church was erected here in 1889. Santa Cruz resident Gladys Sullivan Doyle (d. 1933) financed a reconstruction of a reduced-scale mission church replica on the site of the original church in 1931. In 2011, the CA State Historical Park occupied 38 acres.

Building Notes

As depicted in painting done by Oriana Day de Young (1838-1886) in the 1870s or 1880s, the first complex in 1794 possesed the main church with a walled courtyard, a low dormitory building, and at least two other low, one-story buildings composed of adobe. Another painting by French artist Leon Trousset who saw the mission in the 1850s showed alterations. A one-story building built around a walled courtyard stood to one side of the long, gable-roofed, main church, while a campanile stood on the other. Two pier butresses supported the church's front facade.

The complex site--known as the Mission Hill Area--was listed as a National Historic District #76000530 on 05/17/1976.

Demolition

All of the early adobe buildings that made up the Mission Santa Cruz complex (save for a dormitory built to house Native American workers, the Neary-Rodriguez Adobe), were ruined in 1857 by a succession of earthquakes. Another small wood-frame church was built in 1858.