Mission San Antonio de Padua

The Story

Serra founded San Antonio de Padua on July 14, 1771, in oak country far inland from the coast. Two years later the friars moved it a short distance to the Valley of the Oaks, where the San Antonio River gave a steadier supply of water. With the Salinan people who lived there, they built what is often called the most complete water system of the mission era, including dams, aqueducts, a reservoir, and a working grist mill.

The mission was also an early workshop for building methods that spread down the chain, including fired clay roof tiles that resisted fire far better than thatch. The friars taught music using colored notation, and one of the first recorded marriages in California took place here in 1773. After secularization the buildings fell into ruin; the Historic Landmarks League and later the Hearst Foundation funded the restoration that brought the church back.

Because the surrounding land became Fort Hunter Liggett, no city grew up around the mission. Visitors reach it by a long country road and find the restored church, a museum of mission-era tools and instruments, gardens, and a retreat house. It is still used for Mass and for group retreats.

Church Recognition

Mission San Antonio de Padua was founded on July 14, 1771 by St. Junípero Serra. It is the third of the twenty-one missions of Alta California, and today it is church, museum and retreat center.

The mission was built by Native Californians, and the Church has publicly acknowledged the coercion and harm that mission life involved. That history is told in full on the California Mission Trail page, and it belongs to this place as much as its founding date does.

Go Deeper

The only mission with no modern town around it, still surrounded by open ranch land.

This mission is one of the twenty-one on the California Mission Trail, the third to be founded. The trail page carries the history of the chain as a whole, including the Church's own reckoning with it.