Santa Barbara CHLs Day 1-- 7/25/14

As Ron wrapped up his summer at UCSB, we thought it would be a perfect time to hit the Santa Barbara historic sites!

 

Mission Santa Barbara (CHL 309) is the 10^th mission founded by Father Fermin Lasuen (since Fr. Serra had passed away) in December of 1786. 

 

It is the only mission that has been continuously under the friars control from founding date to the present.  

 There were originally three chapels built but they were all destroyed by the earthquake in 1812.  

 

 

 Many famous Santa Barbara residents are buried here.

 

 The chapel was rebuilt in 1820 and remains to this day.

This is the most buff Jesus I've ever seen!

St. Clare always reminds us of home.

When the missions underwent secularization in 1833, Father Presidente Narciso Duran moved the missions’ headquarters to the mission—more than 3,000 original documents from all the missions were moved here.  It is now the oldest library in California!

Many of the original waterworks that were built by the Chumash are still around the grounds and around Santa Barbara.  

The plaque for the mission was hard to get to-- due to a lack of parking anywhere near it and the fact that it is removed from the mission.  After a great deal of asking around, walking around, and then driving around our persistence paid off.  If you want to find the plaque, you can use the GPS coordinates Ron puts into our spreadsheet-- I promise it will save you a ton of time!

The Hill-Carillo Adobe (CHL 721) was owned by a fascinating figure, Daniel Hill.  Hill renounced his US citizenship and changed religions to woo and marry 13 year old Rafaela.   

He came to CA on ships via Hawaii and other exotic ports.  He settled near the mission determined to have Rafaela as his wife and became a builder.  They married at the mission and had 15 children.  

The adobe is the first in the area with wooden floors and had windows imported from Boston.   It is now an office building so you can't go inside, but we got some fun outdoor shots.

Since Daddy was working on 3 hours of sleep, we decided to stop for the day... but not before we had some McConnell's ice cream!  Now it's off to the hotel to check out the pool and get a good night's rest so we can finish Santa Barbara tomorrow.