Mission San Miguel Arcangel

The site was chosen because of who already lived on it.

Mission San Miguel Arcángel was founded on 25 July 1797 by Father Fermín Lasuén and Father Buenaventura Sitjar, the sixteenth of the California missions. The Franciscans picked the spot specifically for the large number of Salinan people living in the area, whom the Spanish priests intended to evangelise, and it stood beside a Salinan village called Vahca. It also filled a practical gap, sitting between Mission San Luis Obispo and Mission San Antonio de Padua and breaking a journey that had previously taken two days.

A temporary wooden church went up first, with living quarters. The small chapel was replaced in 1798, and between 1816 and 1818 the present church was built with a tile roof and a courtyard. The murals inside were designed by Esteban Munras.

After the Mexican secularization act of 1833 the mission land was sold off. The William Reed family lived in the buildings until 1848, when they were murdered by a band of thieves. A posse tracked the killers into the foothills of Santa Barbara; two died in the fight that followed and the other three were tried and executed by firing squad. Padre Abella, the last Franciscan at San Miguel, had died in July 1841, and after secularization the buildings decayed. The United States government returned the mission to the church in 1859.

It is still in use as a parish church of the Diocese of Monterey. The 2003 San Simeon earthquake closed it to the public for six years, and it reopened on 29 September 2009. It went on the National Register in 1971 and was named a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Of the California missions it keeps more of its original layout and buildings than most, including a portion of its neophyte village.

The red brick bell tower at the south end is the image everyone takes away. Inside, the All Seeing Eye above the altar is the detail people remember.