By Teresa Mariani

Photo Courtesy San Luis Obispo County Visitors and Conventions Bureau.
	Mission San Luis Obispo

It's like stepping back in time. Walk through the church doors into Mission San Miguel on a hot weekday, and you can feel it instantly. Inside the thick adobe walls, the chapel is cool and quiet.

There's art everywhere on those walls, in hues of pinks and rose and soft greens: painted Grecian columns, urns, and flowers, seashells and doves - and above the altar in the middle of a sunburst, a single naked eye.

That's the 'All-Seeing Eye of God,' a common decoration in period Spanish colonial churches, according to Mission San Miguel curator Karen Fontanetta.

The tiny little mission in the dusty little town off Highway 101 in northern San Luis Obispo County is a national treasure - the only Mission in the U.S. with the original interior frescoes - wall paintings - still intact. Walk into Mission San Miguel, and you'll see exactly what the Spanish padres, soldiers and Salinan Indians saw in the 1800s - the paint put there by the Salinans' hands under the direction of a Spanish artist.

And that's just one of the historic California missions on the Central Coast. There are four within easy reach: Mission Santa Inés and Mission La Purisima to the south, and Mission San Luis Obispo and Mission San Miguel to the north.

The California Mission Chain is made up of 21 missions and stretches 650 miles. It runs from the first -- Mission San Diego de Alcala in San Diego, founded in 1769 -- to the last: Mission San Francisco de Solano, founded in Sonoma in 1823.

Mission San Luis Obispo is the halfway point in the chain - and a perfect place to start exploring a little Mission history, especially if you're staying there or in nearby Avila or Pismo Beach. (Click Here for information about places to stay on the Central Coast.)

It is possible to see all four Central Coast missions in one day, but it's a lot more fun to take them two at a time - or one at a time if you're lucky enough to have four days to linger.

Photo By Rob Garretson
From the heart of downtown

Mission San Luis Obispo: The Heart of a City
On the Central Coast, pioneer padre Fr. Junipero Serra arrived in 1772 to found Mission San Luis Obispo. It's the oldest of the four Central Coast missions, and the 5th founded in the state.

Serra named the new mission after Saint Luis, the Bishop of Toulouse, France - Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. The beautiful Mission is today the heart of the city of San Luis Obispo and its beautiful downtown.

In the 1950s, the city closed the block of Monterey Street in front of the Mission and made it a pedestrian plaza with fountains and benches. With the Mission on one side and San Luis Creek on the other, Mission Plaza is the perfect spot for a brown bag lunch. The city also holds festivals and special events there throughout the year.

But Mission San Luis Obispo itself is still a working Catholic church with a congregation of some 1000 families. The Mission is open weekdays and Saturdays for self-guided tours, and does have a historic wing for wandering, plus a gift shop - as well as a beautiful courtyard in back with a rose garden and plenty of shade trees.

In its early days, Mission San Luis Obispo was one of the wealthier missions, according to Dan Krieger. Krieger, a professor of history at nearby Cal Poly State University, is the author of "Looking Backward into the Middle Kingdom," a chronicle of Central Coast history.

Mission San Luis Obispo "had the most diversified economy," Krieger said. "It did very well economically." The mission shipped grain to supply other missions, including Carmel, and had extensive vineyards and vegetable plantings as well as sizeable cattle herds.

And save this for your next game of Trivial Pursuit: It was Mission San Luis Obispo that started the architectural trend of red tile roofs in California. It seems that while some of the local Chumash Indians lived happily at Mission San Luis Obispo, others didn't like the Spaniards at all. Mission San Luis Obispo was a target of frequent raids in its early years; the Chumash would shoot flaming arrows into the Mission's thatched roofs, setting its buildings on fire.

The padres decided the clay tile roofs they remembered from Spain would be a lot more fire-resistant, and set the Mission Chumash to work making them out of local adobe, sun dried and then kiln-fired. It worked: the tiles were both fireproof and waterproof. Soon all the Missions wanted them.

Photo By Rob Garretson
	The Quad at the Mission San Miguel

Mission San Miguel: A Window in Time
It was Mission San Miguel Arcángel that was probably the most powerful of the four Central Coast missions, says Krieger.

San Miguel was founded in 1797 in the spring-filled Salinas River Valley, and named after Biblical Archangel St. Michael. It was a vital travel stop on the north-south route of El Camino Real - the road connecting Mission chain. And it was also on one of the few east-west routes from the coast into the Central Valley. "In terms of external power, San Miguel was a gateway to the Central Valley," Krieger explained. The Mission even set up a valley travel station on what is today Highway 41.

Mission San Miguel lands also proved to be great farmland: the mission planted corn, wheat, and vineyards and raised cattle and sheep. The Salinan Indians were the Native Americans of Mission San Miguel. According to Mission records, there were eager to settle at the Mission and came to it on their own. When the Mexican government began selling off the Mission lands in 1834, the Salinans were told they were free to leave the missions. But Mission records say none of the Salinans wanted to leave.

Though the mission living quarters fell into disrepair, the Mission San Miguel chapel was never destroyed by fire, earthquakes, or floods. After being returned to the Catholic Church in the 1860s, it has since remained a small parish of about 200 families.

Photo By Rob Garretson
The interior of the Mission San Miguel

Unlike all the other missions that still function as churches, Mission San Miguel never "fixed" the church interior by repainting it. "They were always busy with other projects," explains Fontanetta. As a result, the original artwork is still on the mission walls - just the way the Salinans and Spanish soldiers saw it. The frescoes were done in 1821 under the direction of Spanish artist Esteban Munras. That alone makes Mission San Miguel worth a stop.

It's Krieger's favorite of the four missions. As a boy, his family would travel from Southern California to Monterey and stop at Mission San Miguel to rest along the way. "That was in the days before air conditioning. There was nothing like getting out of the car on one of those really hot summer days, and walking into the Mission. It was so cool inside, and then there were the paintings all over. The interior still just knocks me out every time I see it. It's like a movie set."

Photo By Rob Garretson
	A Building at the Mission La Purisima

Lompoc's La Purisima: The Most Accurate Mission
Mission La Purisima just outside Lompoc was the second mission founded on the Central Coast. Its full name is Mission La Purisima Concepción - which translates to The Mission of the Immaculate Conception. Originally founded in 1787, the great earthquake of 1812 shook the newly finished mission church and its buildings to the ground. The Padres relocated La Purisima four miles to the northeast on the other side of the Santa Ynez River. "Anyone who visits La Purisima should really go across the Santa Ynez River and visit the ruins of the original mission," Krieger says.

The re-built Mission La Purisima is the only California Mission to be built in a straight line (or rectangle) with outbuildings. The rest are built in a 'quadrangle,' a square or rectangle formed by a church, one or two wings of living quarters, and walls around a central courtyard.

The padres of Mission La Purisima also built aqueducts, reservoirs and dams to bring in water. La Purisima was another bountiful mission in terms of farming and ranching, and a little over 1,500 Chumash lived there at it's largest.

Today, La Purisima belongs to the state of California. It's La Purisima State Historic Park. Unocal Oil and the Catholic Church donated a total of 922 acres to the state, which then restored La Purisima to its glory days of the early 1800s. Thanks to the 7-year restoration project, "It's probably the most accurate representation of what life was like" at the California missions, Krieger said.

The town of Lompoc has grown up around La Purisima, along with Vandenberg Air Force Base. La Purisima is now a favorite spot for school field trips. Docents in costume tour the students through animal pens and mission shops, showing how the Chumash made soap, candles, wool and leather goods, how they farmed and planted pear orchards. La Purisima is open seven days a week year round (except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's). You can wander there any day you like.

Photo By Rob Garretson
Mission Santa Ines

Mission Santa Inés: The Lonely Mission
Mission Santa Inés, named after St. Agnes, was the last Central Coast mission to be founded - in 1804. Located in a high valley in the coastal mountains, Santa Inés is the halfway point between La Purisima to the north and Mission Santa Barbara to the south.

Those two missions had become home to so many Chumash Indians that they were becoming overcrowded. The Mission chain's head padre ordered Mission Santa Inés built to ease the overcrowding and provide a convenient travel stop at the San Marcos mountain pass.

Mountain springs piped water to the fertile Mission grounds, where the padres and the Chumash planted wheat, corn and vineyards. Cattle and sheep thrived there. But Mission Santa Inés never really boomed. Since the Santa Ynez valley surrounding it wasn't on El Camino Real, it was out of the way and few people traveled there. So few, in fact, that whenever anyone at Mission Santa Inés spotted a traveler, the church bells were rung and everyone living at the mission lined up at the doors to greet the newcomer.

Mission Santa Inés was also the flashpoint for a Chumash revolt in 1824. Large numbers of Spanish soldiers were on the Central Coast then, staying at the missions after fighting off the pirate Bouchard beginning in 1818. But by 1824 Spain had stopped paying the soldiers. Bored, unpaid and stuck on the Missions, the soldiers started harassing Mission Indians.

On February 21, a Spanish soldier at Mission Santa Inés beat up a young Indian Chumash Indian man. The beating sparked the Chumash to revolt. Word of the beating and revolt spread to nearby Mission Santa Barbara and Mission La Purisima. Chumash there joined in, and took over La Purisima and held it for almost a month. Soldiers from Monterey marched down and quashed the takeover. During the month-long revolt, 16 Chumash died, and many more were wounded.

Today, Mission Santa Inés is a small working Catholic Church just outside downtown Solvang. The town of Danish settlers sprung up next to the Mission in the early 1900s after Danish immigrants and Danish-American settlers bought a portion of the old Mission rancho to start a town and college. (Click Here to read more about Solvang).

All four Central Coast Missions are easy to find and fun to wander. (Click Here for directions on how to get to them.) They offer a quiet contrast to the Central Coast beach scene - and a sweet slice of California history.

You can find out more about them at The California Missions On-Line Project, created by California schoolteacher Rob Garretson (www.cuca.k12.ca.us/lessons/missions/) And also at the California Missions website, www.bgmm.com/missions/).

Writer Teresa Mariani lives on the Central Coast and likes visiting Mission San Miguel.

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