Mission Santa Inés

The Story

Father Estévan Tapís, who had succeeded Lasuén as father president, founded Santa Inés on September 17, 1804. It was built to serve Chumash people living inland from Santa Bárbara and La Purísima who had a hard journey over the mountains to reach a mission. It is named for St. Agnes of Rome, the young Roman martyr.

The 1812 earthquake destroyed much of the mission, and the church that replaced it was finished in 1817. In February 1824 a soldier's flogging of a Chumash man here set off the largest Native uprising of the mission era, which spread to La Purísima and Santa Bárbara before it was settled. In 1844 the mission became the site of California's first seminary, the College of Our Lady of Refuge.

The buildings decayed badly after secularization, and long restorations in the 20th century, including work after a 1911 collapse of the bell wall, brought back the church and the arcade. Today it is an active parish of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Visitors see the church with its painted reredos, the bell wall, the arched colonnade, the gardens and cemetery, and a museum whose vestment collection is among the best in the chain.

Church Recognition

Mission Santa Inés was founded on September 17, 1804 by Fr. Estévan Tapís. It is the nineteenth of the twenty-one missions of Alta California, and today it is active parish church and museum.

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

Its collection of mission-era vestments, among the finest in California.

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