Mission Santa Cruz, 1791, Santa Cruz, CA. 



Yesterday morning Ian drove me over to his gym, about two miles from hereat the base of the foothills, on the other side of what's now central Santa Cruz. I decided it would be a good walk back and wound through that neighborhood, over a pedestrian overpass that crosses Route 1, and came out onto the bluff that overlooks downtown. At the top of that hillstands the now iconic 1891 Holy Cross Church. The steeple is one of the first signals that Highway 17 south from San Jose has reached town after the passage over of the redwood crowned Santa Cruz mountains. Calvin just told me, "When I see that church I just know I'm almost home." Anyway, after climbing and descending the spiral ramp of the footbridge, I came out onto the little park plaza with the tiered fountain in front of Holy Cross. The church dominates the south side of the park and diagonally across is a small adobe mission church that looks a lot like the one in the illustration. It was built in 1930s at one third scale and backs onto the Santa Cruz Mission State Park, a small plaza framed by adobe building, some of which date back to the eighteenth century. I still haven't been in there.

Its strange how much you miss even in towns you frequently visit. Ian's lived here in Santa Cruz for almost fifteen years and I stilled haven't visited the Mystery Sport. It's still completely mystery to me. It wasn't until three or four years ago that I visited the Villa Branciforte, the house at the center of the Spanish land grant of the Branciforte family. There are signs for the exit on every highway coming into town. But it's not there. The house-and the land grant--are long gone. Just a plaque. Such is the case with the Mission Santa Cruz. In the state park, some of the outer buildings of the Mission remain, including the loggia inside the plaza. But of the original mission church, some of the foundation is still there behind the nineteenth century church. But that's it.

The thing about adobe is it has to be constantly maintained. It's mud and clay and hay, and sometimes dung. It can be made into bricks, and in California, that was the usual method for taller buildings like church. In New Mexico, the adobe was stacked in narrower and narrower stacks to create towers. But rain eroded it, and the battered walls (outward sloping0 were indeed battered. Once the California mission churches were secularized, they were generally neglected, and mostly just melted away.