Richard M. Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States , was born in Yorba Linda , California , in Orange County , on January 9, 1913. He died in New York City on April 22, 1994. Many consider President Nixon to be one of the most complex and controversial figures in American history. One thing is certain: he was an important product of Southern California , representing (along with another Republican president, Ronald Reagan), the region’s great political and economic influence in the second half of the twentieth century.

“Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

–Richard Nixon

When Nixon was nine, his parents and four brothers moved to Whittier , California . His father managed a grocery and gas station and his mother was a devout member of the local Quaker community. At 17 he entered Whittier College , a small Quaker institution, where he was known for his academic accomplishment, student political activities, and his award-winning skills as a member of the debate team.

In 1934 Nixon received a scholarship to Duke University where he graduated with honors. Afterward he returned to Whittier and joined one of the town’s oldest law firms. It was during the try-outs for a community theater group that he met Patricia Ryan, a school teacher. The couple married in 1940. World War II drew the young lawyer and his new wife to Washington where he worked for the government. In 1942 he joined the Navy and served in the South Pacific as lieutenant, junior grade.

Nixon was a part of a generation of young GI’s who grew up fast during the hard realities of World War II. After the War, many returning veterans decided to make Southern California their home. While in west coast training camps, or in transit to action in the Pacific Theater, they experienced the region’s casual lifestyle and balmy climate, and they liked what they saw. After the war, the result was another Southern California Boom, and the beginning of the region’s emergence as a major force in American politics and economics.

In 1946 a group of Southern California Republicans was looking for a Congressional candidate for this new post-war world. Nixon, then working as a local lawyer, was their man. He ran against liberal Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis and won in a hard-fought race. In his first campaign Nixon proved himself to be a skilled politician who never hesitated to capitalize on his opponent’s real or perceived weaknesses. As a vehement anti-Communist, Nixon attacked Voorhis as benefiting from the support of leftist organizations, perhaps with Communist ties. This hardball, some said ruthless, tactic worked.

Riding the crest of the “Red Scare” era, Nixon rapidly rose to national prominence as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and especially for his pursuit of Alger Hiss, a respected former State Department official. Nixon accused Hiss of being a Communist and Soviet spy. Hiss was indicted and convicted of perjury for his testimony. Ever afterward, Nixon was anathema to American liberals.

When he ran for the Senate in 1950 Nixon faced another Southern California liberal Democrat, Helen Gahagan Douglas. His campaign advertising dubbed his opponent “the Pink Lady,” accusing Douglas of extreme leftist politics. Such bare-knuckle tactics weren’t pretty, but again, they worked. Nixon won, but he’d acquired a nickname that would haunt him for the rest of his life: “Tricky Dick.”

During the early decades of the 20th Century California led a national progressive movement with leaders such as Governor Hiram Johnson, and the state spawned ideas that were considered Socialist by many. But at the same time, Southern California also had deep conservative roots, expressed by powerful forces such as the Los Angeles Times, beginning at the turn of the century with the influence of Times Publisher Harrison Gray Otis, and later members of the Chandler family. The conservative, anti-Communism of mid-century Southern California , along with its post-War economic importance, gave Richard Nixon a powerful platform for national politics.

In 1952, at age 39, Nixon was chosen by Republican presidential candidate and national war hero, Dwight Eisenhower to be his running mate. The team had hardly begun to campaign before Nixon faced one of the many crises of his political career. He was accused of benefiting from a secret “slush fund” of money from wealthy supporters. There was talk of removing him from the ticket, but with his wife Pat at his side, Nixon struck back with a dramatic television appearance, itemizing his finances and ending with a reference to one gift he vowed never to return, a pet puppy given to his daughters, Trisha and Julie. The dog was named “Checkers” and the “Checkers Speech” was one of the first examples of the power of television to affect public opinion. Nixon remained on the Republican ticket which went on to an easy victory over the Democrats.

During his years as Vice-President Nixon traveled widely and deepened his understanding of foreign affairs. In 1959, a lively televised exchange with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, debating the advantages of capitalism over communism during a Moscow trade fair, enhanced Nixon’s reputation as a national leader capable of performing well on an international stage.

In 1960, after two terms as President, Dwight Eisenhower retired from politics. Nixon, with eight years experience as vice president, was ready to run for President on his own. His Democratic opponent was another young political star, and friend from the Senate, John F. Kennedy. It was an extremely close election, and ironically, it was the same media power that had saved Nixon with the Checkers speech and enhanced his reputation in Moscow that was credited with influencing his defeat. Many say that his haggard appearance on television during the first of four presidential debates, in contrast with Kennedy’s energetic charm, contributed to Nixon’s defeat.

Nixon returned to California , practiced law and wrote a book about his political life: Six Crises. Many counted him out of politics, but as he would do again and again he rebounded, in 1962 announcing his candidacy for Governor of California. Surprising many pundits, Nixon’s opponent, the popular incumbent Democrat, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, emerged the unexpected victor. It was a stinging defeat for Richard Nixon. At a press conference he bitterly announced to reporters that “They wouldn’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” It appeared as if his life in politics was over.

Richard Nixon returned again to private life, this time in New York City . Again opponents and pundits wrote him off the American political map. Again they were wrong. When the assassination of President Kennedy, and the emergence of Lyndon Johnson as a powerful Democratic president, easily defeating conservative Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964, Nixon’s name was raised again as a future presidential candidate.

By 1968, with the Vietnam War tearing the nation apart, a weary and unpopular President Johnson stepped aside as a candidate for another term. Richard Nixon rose from his past defeats, won the Republican nomination, and soundly defeated Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. In 1969, in one of the great comeback of American history, he was sworn in as the 37th President of the United States .

After a period of escalation, new bombing in Cambodia and more American casualties, Nixon finally succeeded in negotiating a cease fire, extricating America from the Vietnam War. Images of desperate refugees, clinging to escape helicopters hovering over the abandoned U.S. Embassy in Saigon , hardly represented the “Peace with Honor,” Nixon claimed, but one of the most brutal and tragic episodes in 20th Century history was officially over.

As he was struggling with the war in Southeast Asia, Nixon was reaching out to establish diplomatic relations with a long-isolated world power, the People’s Republic of China . As a staunch anti-communist, Nixon’s initiatives stunned many, but others noted that it was just his “anti-Red” reputation that made this bold initiative palatable to a wary American public. In 1972, accompanied by his influential Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, Nixon made an unprecedented visit to China , meeting Chairman Mao Tse-tung and negotiating with Premier Chou En-lai. It was the beginning of a new era in US-Sino relations and later that year Nixon and his Vice President, Spiro Agnew, were easily elected to a second term.

Nixon’s second term would be one of the ugliest and most divisive in American history. It began with the resignation of Vice President Agnew, after pleading no contest to tax evasion. Agnew was replaced by Senate Majority Leader Gerald Ford. But soon Nixon was embroiled in a controversy of his own, dubbed by the press “Watergate.” The President’s long held hardball political tactics had gone too far, resulting in a burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington ‘s Watergate Hotel, and a subsequent “cover-up.”

The country watched transfixed as a Congressional investigation moved inexorably toward impeachment. The revelation of a secret taping system in the White House provided final self-incriminating evidence. The tapes revealed a vindictive, often profane man, willing to do virtually anything to win. It was a Richard Nixon that liberals were convinced was always there. For the rest of the world, the tapes were horrifying evidence of a dark side to a man who had played a role in American public life for more than 25 years, and to many, the end of an idealist image of American politics and the presidency.

Facing virtually assured impeachment, Richard Nixon resigned his office on August 8, 1974 and returned to Southern California in disgrace.

Living in the former “Western White House” in San Clemente , north of San Diego , Nixon licked his wounds. Pardoned by now-President Gerald Ford, he wrote his memoirs, and then almost unbelievably, proceeded slowly to try to rebuild his reputation. He moved to New York , consulted with world leaders and traveled abroad. To some, he seemed on the way to another comeback, but in the end he would never escape the shadow of Watergate. Nixon died in New York on April 22, 1994, a little less than a year after the death of his wife Pat. A surprisingly moving memorial tribute at the Nixon Birthplace Historic Site and Presidential Library in Yorba Linda , California suggested that history has yet to write the final word on Richard M. Nixon’s controversial life and legacy.

– Contributed by Jon Wilkman, 1999

Richard J. Neutra

Richard Joseph Neutra is considered one of the world’s most influential modern architects. His innovative and open designs express the freedom from conventions that many find in Southern California . He was born in Vienna , Austria in 1892 and died in Los Angeles in 1970. In Berlin , Neutra worked with modernist architect Erich Mendelsohn, but from his student days he was drawn to the United States . The work of Frank Lloyd Wright was an early inspiration, and it wasn’t long before Neutra and his wife Dione arrived in New York in 1923. While in Chicago , where he’d traveled to meet Wright, the Neutras saw a travel poster exclaiming “California Calls You!” It wasn’t long before they were on their way West.

“Place Man in relationship to Nature; that’s where he developed and where he feels most at home!”

– Richard Neutra

Neutra’s first impressions of Southern California were candid. He found Angelenos of the 1920s “mentally footloose,” with a cultural naiveté “bordering everywhere on mixup.” But he eventually grew to love his adopted city. With the support of friend and fellow Austrian-born Southern California architect, Rudolf Schindler, Neutra’s first major commission, the Lovell House (1929), announced the arrival of an important new architectural vision. Neutra responded to the Southern California climate by creating designs where extensive use of glass allowed indoor and outdoor spaces to flow freely together. A journalist once described his work as ” … the most amiable relationship between science, technique, industrialization and good taste.”

In 1932, Neutra designed a home for himself in the Silverlake hills. It also served as his office. Describing his work habits in an article available at the Neutra website( www.neutra.org ), Neutra’s architect son Dion writes: “Dad’s best time for creative thinking was early in the morning, long before any activity had started in the office below. He often stayed in bed working with ideas and designs, even extending into appointments which had been made earlier. His one concession was to put on a tie over his night shirt when receiving visitors while still propped up in bed!”

One of Neutra’s most famous projects is the Kauffman House (1946), built on a remote site near Palm Springs . Another is the Moore House (1952) in Ojai, featuring a reflecting pool which also served as a fire and irrigation reservoir. As Neutra’s son Dion describes it, “the pool creates the illusion that the house in floating on a water garden.” In addition to homes, Neutra designed many distinguished public buildings, including the Channel Heights housing project (1932) in San Pedro, the L.A. Hall of Records (1961–2), and many schools, including Emerson Jr. High School (1938) in West L.A., Palos Verdes High School (1961) and the Fine Arts Building at Cal State Northridge (1961), which unfortunately was severely damaged in the 1994 earthquake and razed in 1997. Sadly, many Neutra designs have been lost, are poorly maintained, or modified beyond recognition. Racing against time, historians and architectural activists are working hard to preserve this great architect’s contributions to an especially Southern California vision of urban life.

– Contributed by Jon Wilkman, 1999

Harrison Gray Otis

Harrison Gray Otis (1837–1917) was publisher of the Los Angeles Times for three decades, a powerful conservative force in turn-of-the-century Southern California , and an unrivaled promoter of regional growth.

Otis was born on a farm near Marietta , Ohio , and named after his uncle, a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts . At the age of 23, he was a member of the 1860 Republican national convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for President. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Otis enlisted as a private in the Union Army, fought in 15 battles, and was wounded twice and cited for gallantry. Discharged as a lieutenant colonel, he worked at various jobs, including compositor in the government printing office and editor of the Grand Army Journal, before leaving for California . Like more than a few Civil War veterans, for the rest of his life, he liked to be referred to in military terms; first as Colonel, and later General, Harrison Gray Otis.

By one account, Otis came to California in 1876 to raise Angora goats. Historian Carey McWilliams described him simply as “a man without resources, a typical drifter of the period.” He ended up as editor of a Santa Barbara newspaper, the Press. When the publication failed, he took an appointment as a treasury agent on the Seal Islands off Alaska . In his book Newspapers of Los Angeles : The First Fifty Years: 1851–1900, Henry W. Splitter writes that Otis came to Los Angeles when he heard that its newest paper, the Los Angeles Daily Times, was for sale. The first four-page issue of the Times had appeared on December 4, 1881, but the owners faced financial problems. Scraping together $6,000, Otis bought a quarter interest in the paper in 1882 and became its editor, as well as editor of a sister weekly publication, the Mirror.

For a weekly salary of $15, Otis wrote the editorials and much of the local news. His wife Eliza, whom he married when he was 20, contributed columns about women, morals and religion. In 1883, Otis and entrepreneur H. H. Boyce became co-owners of the Times, now grown to eight pages, and formed the Times Mirror Company. Otis set about transforming the newspaper. As John Weaver writes in Los Angeles: The Enormous Village: “He dropped ‘Daily’ from the Times masthead, ordered up livelier headlines, doubled the telegraphic news coverage, made room for letters to the editor and added a column, ‘Political Points’ which collected editorial barbs aimed at Democrats by other Republican journals.”

In 1885, the Times put out its first “Midwinter” edition extolling the climate and other virtues of Southern California, even as cheap cross-country railway fares, for a short time as low as $1.00, drew thousands of visitors and homesteaders to the area. Otis saw a glorious future for Los Angeles whose population totaled about 12,000 when he joined the Times. ” Los Angeles is in a transition state,” he wrote in an early editorial. “She has finally waked up from the dull lethargy of those old days when she was one great sheep-walk and cattle range. All she needs now is men of brawn and brains to grow up with her.”

To ease his workload, Otis hired Charles Fletcher Lummis as the Times’ first city editor. The flamboyant Lummis, Harvard drop out and editor of a small-town weekly in Ohio , had walked 3,507 miles from Ohio to Los Angeles in 143 days, writing a weekly series of letters about his journey for the Times. Otis met Lummis at Mission San Gabriel on February 1, 1885, and walked with him the last eleven miles into the city. Lummis became city editor the next day. “Col. Otis and I hit it off from the start,” he later wrote. “He hated anybody who was afraid of him. Because of his dominant and overbearing way a great many good people were afraid of him. One of the reasons he liked me was that I wasn’t.”

In 1886, Otis bought H.H. Boyce’s half-interest in the paper and named himself president, general manager and editor-in-chief.

In his 1932 book Los Angeles , writer Morrow Mayo had this to say of Otis: “He was a large, aggressive man, with a walrus mustache, a goatee, and a warlike demeanor. He resembled Buffalo Bill, General Custer and Henry Watterson. The military bee buzzed incessantly in his bonnet. He was a holy terror in his newspaper plant; his natural voice was that of a game-warden roaring at seal poachers. He was politically ambitious all his life; though he never ran for an office, he asked for many. When McKinley, his former army commander, was elected President he asked to be appointed an Assistant Secretary of War, but Secretary Alger would not have him.” When the Spanish-American War broke out, Otis, then in his early 60s, volunteered for service and was assigned to the Philippines , at which time he was promoted to Brigadier General.

Under Otis’ leadership, the Times became the region’s leading business promoter and its most strident Republican, conservative and anti-union voice. As George E. Mowry writes in The California Progressives: “It is possible that no man in all the United States hated organized labor more, and it is certain that few did more to obstruct its advance.” For years, the Page 1 banner of the Times included the phrase, “True Industrial Freedom,” while editorials and news stories reflected Otis’ uncompromising opposition to the union shop. As John Weaver notes, labor leaders called Los Angeles “Otistown” because it was “the country’s most impregnable open shop fortress.”

Otis claimed that he never objected to “lawful or legitimate organizations formed and maintained by laborers in any branch of industry,” only to the “gross and mischievous abuse in the management of the organizations by the leaders of them.” In fact, he’d even been a member of the typesetters union — briefly. Nevertheless, the Times’ position as an anti-labor lightning rod led to the bombing of the Times’ 1st and Broadway building on Oct. 1, 1910. Twenty people were killed and 17 injured. The Times labeled the bombing “The Crime of the Century” and blamed it on “unionists,” even though labor leaders vehemently denounced the bombing. Two brothers, John and James McNamara (John was a labor union official), represented by legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow, later confessed to the crime.

Over the years, Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler became the city’s unrivaled power brokers, “the single most important force in Los Angeles aside from government itself” — in the words of historian Andrew Rolle. ( Chandler had joined the Times in 1885 as a circulation department clerk. He soon became circulation manager and, in 1894, husband of Otis’ daughter, Marian. Chandler went on to become vice president and general manager of the Times before succeeding Otis as publisher.) Together they shaped the growth of the city and region.

In the historic struggle over federal funds to build a breakwater at San Pedro harbor in the late 1890s, a move opposed by the powerful Southern Pacific railway which favored building a new harbor in Santa Monica where SP had waterfront interests, the Times vigorously supported San Pedro. Its backing was instrumental in carrying the day for San Pedro, making Los Angeles a major west coast port, now the busiest in the United States .

Otis, Chandler and the Times were also early backers of a $23 million bond issue, approved in 1907, to build an aqueduct that would carry Owens River water to Los Angeles . The 225-mile aqueduct, built under the supervision of William Mulholland, delivered its first water in 1913.

By then, a 30-man syndicate that included Otis and Chandler had acquired 47,500 acres of grain fields in the San Fernando Valley from the I. N. Van Nuys family for $2.5 million. Anticipating both the arrival of water and Valley annexation to Los Angeles (which the Times also promoted), they divided the acreage into town lots, mostly suitable for small farms, and launched a sales boom that formed the foundation of the Chandler family fortune. Otis took 550 acres at Ventura and Reseda boulevards for a ranch home. The property was later sold to writer Edgar Rice Burroughs and became known as Tarzana. Otis also invested heavily in Mexican real estate.

Otis died on July 30, 1917, at the age of 80. He bequeathed his Wilshire Boulevard home to the city for use in “the advancement of the arts.” Until 1997, the site housed the Otis Art Institute, now re-located to L.A. ’s Westside, and known as the Otis College of Art and Design. After Harry Chandler’s death, his son Norman became the newspaper’s publisher. Norman ‘s wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler also played an important role in the life of modern Los Angeles .

Until Harrison Gray Otis’ great grandson, Otis Chandler, the son of Norman and Dorothy, became publisher of the Times in the 1960s, the Times retained its outspoken and openly partisan conservative voice. Afterward, under the younger Chandler ‘s leadership, the paper adopted a more balanced approach to the news, although some long time readers complained that the paper too often took a liberal editorial stance. It’s likely that “the General” would have agreed.

Directly across Wilshire Boulevard from the site of Otis’ former home, in a corner outside MacArthur Park , stands an imposing but often overlooked bronze statue of Otis in army uniform. Next to him is the statue of a young boy selling newspapers, presumably copies of the Los Angeles Times, which remains the region’s most powerful and internationally respected journalistic voice.

— contributed by Albert Greenstein, 1999

Pio Pico

“What are we to do then? Shall we remain supine, while these daring strangers are overrunning our fertile plains, and gradually outnumbering and displacing us? Shall these incursions go on unchecked, until we shall become strangers in our own land?”

– Pio Pico

Pio de Jesus Pico (1801–1894), the last Mexican governor of Alta California, the region above what is now Mexico , was born in the San Gabriel Mission, the son of a soldier, Jose Maria Pico. His father had come from Mexico with the famous Anza expedition of 1801. The fourth of ten children, Pico’s heritage was a mix of African, Native American, Hispanic and European roots. A revolutionary in his youth, he became governor in 1845 following a revolt that ended with a bloodless artillery duel near Cahuenga Pass that forced out Governor Manuel Micheltorena. The historic site, Campo de Cahuenga, opposite Universal Studios, marks the spot today.

During his brief tenure as the last Mexican governor, Pico completed the secularization of the missions. He was also accused of recklessly redistributing mission property to friends and allies as the American takeover of California neared.

Pico greatly feared the growing American migration to California . “They are cultivating farms, establishing vineyards, erecting mills, sawing up lumber, building workshops, and doing a thousand other things which seem natural to them, but which Californians neglect or despise,” he said in a speech. Pico favored annexation with France or England , believing that the European powers would be more tolerant of the slower Californio way of life.

In 1846, with American troops occupying Los Angeles (which Pico had had made the state capital) and San Diego , Pico bowed to the inevitable and escaped to Mexico . Two years later, with California a territory of the United States , he returned home as a private citizen, businessman and early member of the Los Angeles City Council.

Over the years, gambling losses took a heavy toll on Pico’s fortune. He eventually sold his last major holding, a ranch in the San Fernando Valley , and built Pico House, a deluxe downtown hotel that was the largest of its day. He eventually lost the hotel, too. Living off the charity of friends, he died in poverty in Los Angeles at the home of his daughter, Joaquina Pico Moreno, and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

(Pico House, located on the Plaza across from Olvera Street , has been restored and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Pico Boulevard , a major L.A. thoroughfare, bears the governor’s name.) The Pio Pico home he called El Ranchito still stands in Whittier .

– Contributed by Albert Greenstein, 1999

Fr. Junipero Serra

Fr. Junipero Serra (1713–1784), Franciscan padre and founder of the Mission system that anchored Spain’s colonization of California, was born Miguel Jose Serra in Petra on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, the son of peasant farmers.

Bright, earnest, and deeply religious at an early age, he was schooled by Franciscans and sent to Lullian University in Mallorca’s capital city of Palma, where he remained as a student, scholar, orator and professor of philosophy for 15 years. His given name, Miguel Jose, made way for the adopted name of Junipero, after Brother Juniper, a companion and ardent disciple of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order. He was ordained a priest shortly before Christmas, 1737.

“The King has need of you. Come at once. We are going to found new missions.”

–Jose de Galvez, Spain’s Visitor General for Mexico, in summoning Fr. Serra to his assignment in New California.

At the age of 36 (middle-aged by 18th century standards), Fr. Serra turned his back on the comfort and routine of academic life to answer a call for missionaries in the New World. In August, 1749, he set sail for Mexico accompanied by two of his university students — Frs. Francisco Palou and Juan Crespi. Arriving in Vera Cruz, he set out on foot for Mexico City, site of the College of San Fernando, the hub of Franciscan activities in the New World. It was during this arduous trek, covering more than 260 miles, that Fr. Serra’s left foot and leg became infected from an insect bite, leaving him permanently lame and causing him pain and suffering all his life.

“By the time that Serra arrived in the New World,” writes Theodore Maynard in The Long Road of Father Serra, “the period of military conquest was considered over, except for occasional flurries, and the conquest had passed to a new agency, that of the missionaries. The missionaries of course had always accompanied every Spanish army, which looked upon itself as engaged in a crusade, but peace was now normal, and what remained to be done could be brought about more effectively (not to say more economically, an important consideration) by the cross than the sword.”

Fr. Serra would remain in Mexico for almost 20 years, including a year as Prefect of Baja California, before undertaking the work for which he is remembered. The call came unexpectedly in 1769, when he was instructed to join dragoon captain Gaspar de Portola on an expedition to New California (what is today the state of California. Old California was then the Baja peninsula). The plan was to establish Missions at three strategic points -– San Diego, the Monterey Bay area, and the Santa Barbara Channel area — each with a presidio or garrison for protection. Although small in size, these outposts would represent Spain’s claim to the region if challenged by England, Russia or another imperial power.

San Diego was to be the rendezvous point from which Portola and a small band of soldiers were to head north to find Monterey Bay and secure its harbor. Four separate parties left Baja – two by land (a distance of about 400 miles) and two by sea. All reached San Diego -– but at a terrible price. Twenty-four men aboard one of the vessels died of scurvy or plague, while many others arrived sick and disabled. Most of the Indians who had joined the two land parties died or deserted. A relief ship carrying food and supplies from Baja was lost at sea. Fr. Serra, a member of the second land party, limped into San Diego suffering greatly from his swollen leg. Nevertheless, on July 16, 1769, sixteen days after his arrival, he founded the first of California’s twenty-one Missions, San Diego de Alcala.

second Mission, San Carlos Borromeo, opened temporarily at Monterey, then permanently beside the Carmel River in 1771. Thereafter it became the headquarters of Mission operations in the state.

The third Mission (San Antonio de Padua) was not located in the Santa Barbara Channel area as originally planned, but near present-day King City in Monterey County in 1771. The “Channel” Mission, San Buenaventura, was finally built in 1782 — the last of the nine Missions to be erected during Fr. Serra’s lifetime.

Nine more Missions were built by his successor, Fr. Firmin Francisco de Lasuen, and three were founded after Fr. Lasuen’s death. The 21st and last Mission, San Francisco Solano, was built in Sonoma in 1823. Linking all the Missions was the famed El Camino Real, the “King’s” or “Royal” Highway running from Loreto in Baja, Calif., to San Francisco. In part, it is the route followed today by Highway 101.

The Mission system endured for 65 years, all of them laden with challenges. As James D. Hart writes in A Companion to California: “Conversion of members of the tribes who came to be called Mission Indians was slow; by 1774 the first five missions had baptized fewer than 500 infants and enrolled under 500 members, averaging fewer than 40 persons annually for each mission….But difficulties also came from poor supply lines, insufficient equipment and food, strained and bureaucratic relations with Mexico, and problems in converting and controlling the generally docile but sometimes hostile Indians.”

Blessed with an even temper, good humor, and administrative skill, Fr. Serra was the glue that held the system together during its early years. Despite his austere habits (he used a board for a bed or slept on the ground) and small stature (his height is given as 5-ft., 2-in.), he was a tireless worker with an unshakable faith in his apostolic mission of saving souls, which he regarded as more important than “civilizing” the natives to make them good subjects of the King of Spain.

He fought hard to limit the military’s authority over the padres’ conduct of

Mission life. He spoke out against a government plan that would have ended all ship-building in Baja and left the Missions entirely dependent on overland mule trains for their supplies. He vigorously opposed early efforts by Spanish authorities to convert the Missions into pueblos or villages, which he feared would reduce the authority of the padres and set in motion a break-up of what he considered a bucolic way of life centered on agriculture and cattle raising. The Mission Indians, he argued, were not yet ready for independent living or ownership of private property.

(Many observers take a less benevolent view of Mission life, especially in its later years. Carey McWilliams, writing in Southern California: An Island on the Land, calls post-1800 Mission existence “a nightmare for the Indians,” a forced-labor system in which infractions of rules occasioned harsh punishment, and individual beliefs and tribal customs that conflicted with Christian religion were suppressed. Syphilis and measles also took a heavy toll of Indian life.)

By prevailing in his efforts to maintain the existing Mission system, Fr. Serra made possible its continued growth under his successor, Fr. Lasuen. As James D. Hart writes in A Companion to California:

“All missions controlled great landholdings (e.g., in 1822 Santa Barbara held nearly 122,000 acres with orchards, vineyards, many horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and swine). The missions themselves, usually built as a quadrangle, contained a church, workshops, living and dining quarters for priests, a library, and an infirmary with outbuildings for the Indian men (unmarried women were often locked in a dormitory), and an adjacent cemetery. The buildings were architecturally attractive, even though they rarely had skilled builders. They differed in design but all featured stuccoed adobe, tiled roofs, and covered arcades. Some contained a campanile, others a campanario (a wall with open insets for bells), Moorish-styled windows and pilasters and other adornments to enhance otherwise simple faces.

“By 1833 some 31,000 Indians still lived in such settings under a temporal and spiritual despotism, not always benevolent, controlled by only 60 padres and 300 soldiers. By that date almost 88,000 Indians had been baptized and over 24,000 had been married by Catholic ritual. That year the Mexican government, for political, economic and other reasons, decided that the Indians were to live an independent life…The lands were to be divided for common use and each Indian family was also to be given a small private plot.”

By then, Fr. Serra had been dead for half a century and many of his fears about the fate of the Mission Indians were about to be realized (see: Helen Hunt Jackson).

Apparently worn out by his labors, Fr. Serra died in his sleep at the Carmel Mission on Aug. 28, 1784, at the age of 70. His body rests under the Mission altar alongside his Mallorca friend and former student, Fr. Crespi, who died two years earlier after a distinguished life as a priest and explorer. His other lifelong friend, Fr. Palou, went on to write an invaluable biography of Fr. Serra as well as an important history of the region, Noticias de la Nuevo California.

Fr. Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II on Sept. 25,1988.

There is a Junipero Serra Museum in Presidio Park, San Diego (2727 Presidio Dr.) above the site of the 18th century Presidio and Fr. Serra’s Mission. The museum houses artifacts from archeological excavations at the Presidio. It also interprets San Diego’s history during the Spanish and Mexican periods. Call 619–297-3258 for information.

K-12 students and teachers might enjoy the “CyberSerra” Website.

– Contributed by Albert Greenstein, 1999