Visited Santa Barbara Mission today. The tenth of twenty one Missions set up by the Spanish Franciscans, on the Camino Real (Royal Road) which runs the length of the California coast. The first Mission was set up in San Diego and the twenty first in what is now Sonoma, north of San Francisco.
The Missions were set up to Convert the Chumash Indians to Christianity.
The original church was an adobe building, simple and unpretentious. The present church, the fourth and grandest was completed in 1820 after the previous one was destroyed by the earthquake of 1812. The 1925 earthquake severely damaged the Mission and in 1953 the bell towers were reinforced to withstand future earthquakes which are bound to happen.