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Building History

This mission was founded 12/14/1817. This was the last mission set up by the Franciscans in Alta California, and was designed at a time when Native American inhabitants of Mission Dolores in San Francisco, CA, were becoming ill with newly-imported European diseases.

According to the Historic American Buildings Survey, Mission San Rafael Archangel was "an adobe building 79 feet long, 38 feet wide and 16 feet high divided by partitions into Chapel, Padre's house and other apartments with adobe Indian quarters nearby."

Building Notes

One building within the Mission complex served as Marin County's first courthouse and jail. In 1851, one of the buildings in the Mission San Rafael complex was reparied and reused as the first jail, courthouse and Marin County building. Marin County government used it until it moved operations in 1856 to the Timothy Murphy Adobe in San Rafael. According to Marin County historian Helen Van Cleave Park and Clyde F. Trudell, "In [1856] the courts were transferred to an adobe built by Timothy Murphy, a pioneer settler, and there they were held for the next 17 years. Located on the southeast corner of 'C' and Fourth Streets, the adobe had been purchased from the Murphy estate in 1853 by one Timothy Mahon for $1,000, and sold by him to the county for $5,000 in 1856." (See Helen Van Cleave Park and Clyde F. Trudell, "Old Courthouse History," Marin Independent-Journal, Marin Magazine, 11/08/1975, p. M5.)

Information in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) also echoed this 1975 Park-Trudell article except for one detail. The HABS record indicated that the Murphy Adobe had been utilized as the Marin County Courthouse #2 beginning in 1853 not 1856. It stated: "The need for a County Building and lock-up had been met in 1851 by converting one of the old mission buildings into a 'juzgado' (Hoose-gow) for this purpose, and so it was used until 1853. In that latter year the courts were transferred to an adobe, built and formerly owned by Timothy Murphy, a pioneer settler in the county, and there they were held for the next twenty years." (See the Historic American Buildings Survey, "Marin County Courthouse, Fourth Street between A & Court Streets, San Rafael, Marin County, CA," accessed 10/05/2016.) It is likely that the Murphy Adobe began to be used in 1856 not 1853.

PCAD id: 5131