By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
In addition to iconic sights like the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Chinatown, a half dozen historic Spanish Catholic missions also surround and accentuate San Francisco Bay.
The Carmel mission (Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Río Carmelo), the most famous of the Franciscan foundations that define the modern California map, is just 80 miles south of the bay. From 1770 until 1833, it served as mission headquarters.
From there, Franciscan priests like Junipero Serra—who is buried at Carmel and now is a canonized Catholic saint—sent missionaries north to establish religious, economic, and military outposts around the entire bay area.
We toured two of them, in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, a few years ago. We saw five more in the Summer of 2026, during our ongoing pilgrimage seeking to visit all twenty-one historic California missions.
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Serra established Mission Dolores (Misión San Francisco de Asís) in San Francisco 250 years ago as the sixth of California’s missions. The mission started in 1776 just as the American founders approved the Declaration of Independence on the other side of the continent.
The mission got its nickname from a nearby creek named Arroyo de los Dolores, or “Creek of Sorrows.” In turn, the mission gave its name to the city by the bay and to the surrounding neighborhood where it still sits today.
Serra celebrated mass in the original chapel, which no longer exists. The replacement chapel, built in 1791and still standing, is the oldest building in San Francisco.
The adobe structure survived the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The disaster killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed 80% of the city.
The church next door fell during the tremors and resulting inferno. San Francisco Catholics rebuilt it over a century ago in 1918.
Extensive restoration and renovation efforts have allowed both buildings to serve as an active Catholic church/parish for two centuries.
During our recent visit, we toured the buildings and adjacent cemetery. We also attended the 5:00 p.m. Saturday evening Mass, surrounded by lovely stained glass images of all twenty-one California missions.
The Mission Dolores cemetery is notable not just for a pivotal scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 magnum opus film Vertigo.It also is the final resting place of some 5,000 Ohlone, Miwok, and other First Californians who helped build the place.
Cemetery markers date from 1830 to 1898. Others buried there include the first Mexican governor, Luis Antonio Arguello, and the first commandant of the Presidio—Lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga—who built the historic San Francisco fort in 1776.
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Although he never actually said or wrote it, Mark Twain often gets credit for the line, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Despite the misattribution, the line rings true.
That may be why so many early residents of the San Francisco mission got sick. In response, in 1817 the Franciscans opened an asistencia (helper mission) forty miles north in San Rafael where the weather is milder. We went there too.
Mission San Rafael Arcángel was the twentieth of the twenty-one California missions. The Franciscans named it after the Book of Tobit’s angel Raphael, which means “God heals.”
The current church was built in 1919. The Sunday we were there, it hosted masses in English and Spanish.
The nearby old mission building we saw is a replica that dates to 1949. During our visit, the chapel hosted masses in Vietnamese and Portuguese.
Chief Marin (1781-1839), the great chief of a local tribe, was baptized at Mission San Francisco de Asís but moved to Mission San Rafael, where he worked as a magistrate. Marin County is named after him.
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A few miles further north in Sonoma, we also saw the last of the California missions, founded in 1823 as Mission San Francisco de Solano. It is the only one launched after Mexico won its independence from Spain.
The foundation started without official church approval. A priest at the nearby Mission San Francisco de Asís was unhappy working there and—with the approval of the government—built his own mission.
The present chapel was constructed in 1841, but damaged by the 1906 earthquake. It was restored in 1911 and today is a centerpiece of the Sonoma State Historic Park.
The mission is right next to the Sonoma military barracks. With the encouragement of American military leader John C. Fremont, the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846 started there, seeking to establish the independent California Republic and break away from Mexico.
The scenic road to and from the mission is surrounded by dozens and dozens of vineyards growing the grapes used in the famous Sonoma and Napa region wines. A priest at the Sonoma mission planted the first vines in 1823, used the grapes for altar wine.
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There is only one Spanish mission located on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. The Franciscans started their fourteenth foundation—Mission San José (La Mision del Gloriosisimo Patriarch San Jose)—in 1797 in the present-day city of Fremont, California.
Less than a decade later, a severe measles epidemic reduced the mission’s population by 25%. Despite this slow start, San Jose became the most prosperous of the northern missions and by 1831 included more than 100 buildings.
One of the native persons converted at the mission and named Estanislao led an 1828 uprising against the Mexican authorities and raided the local missions. He returned to the mission a few years later, asked for forgiveness, and the local priest won him a pardon from the local governor.
He remained at the mission where he worked and taught until his death in 1838. Both the Stanislaus River near Modesto and Stanislaus County are named in his honor.
Mexico secularized the San Jose mission complex in 1836 and it served as a trading post during the 1848 California gold rush. President Abraham Lincoln eventually restored all the California missions to the Catholic Church.
The original 1809 adobe church was destroyed by a 1868 earthquake. An authentic reproduction was completed in 1985.
The restored chapel is part of St. Joseph’s parish of the Diocese of Oakland. The site also features a visitor center, museum (housed in the only remaining original mission building), and a slide show telling the mission’s story.
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Mission San Juan Bautista—founded in 1797—is the fifteenth of the Spanish missions established in present-day California. Named for Saint John the Baptist, the mission gave its name to the surrounding small town some ninety miles south of San Francisco.
Following its creation in 1797, San Juan’s population grew quickly. By 1803, there were 1,036 Native Americans living at the mission, but many in slave-like conditions.
On a more positive note, one Franciscan who had a special talent for music taught singing to the Native Americans. San Juan Bautista soon was known as “the Mission of Music,” in part for his famous choir.
The mission sits on the San Andreas Fault and over the years several earthquakes have damaged it. During a difficult twenty days in 1800, the mission endured up to 6 earthquakes a day.
In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock featured the mission in his thriller film Vertigo. With movie magic, the famed filmmaker added a bell tower for two pivotal scenes.
The present church is an active Catholic parish, nestled in the heart of Central California’s farm country. The mission is one of the few foundations still located on its original Spanish plaza, now called the San Juan Bautista State Historic Park.
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With our recent trip, our Historic California Missions pilgrimage is half over, as we have visited ten missions and attended Mass at four of them. Eleven remain, nestled between unsightly places like Carmel and San Luis Obispo and then between Santa Barbara and San Diego.
One of them—named after my own guardian angel St. Michael—is a two-hundred-year-old church featuring the untouched original interior paintings of the native artists who decorated it.
Finishing the pilgrimage will be tough work. But somebody’s gotta do it.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for a future Christmas.
