Many of present-day parks established at the Spanish missions feature a chapel, cloistered buildings, and gardens around a central plaza. Nearby Missions San Juan Baptista and Santa Barbara are particularly well restored but unfortunately, Mission Santa Cruz is not. By the time Americans arrived in Santa Cruz in the 1850s, the original Mission buildings had been destroyed by earthquakes, had melted away in the rain, or had been just been torn down and replaced.

The only building remaining from the mission is the long white adobe on the south side of School Street. The adobe and grounds form Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park. The exhibits tell the story of the people who lived in the adobe over different historical periods and admission is free.

Mission Never Prospered

The Spanish Franciscans arrived in Santa Cruz in 1791, and started building a mission on the banks of the San Lorenzo River near where Elihu Anthony’s Lower Plaza would be 60 years later (today it’s the downtown area surrounding the Town Clock) . It was named “Misión la Exaltacion de la Santa Cruz” which was the name that the explorer Gaspar de Portolà gave to the area when he camped on the banks of the San Lorenzo and erected a wooden cross on October 17, 1769. After the first settlement was flooded, the mission was moved up to the bluff. The Mission never prospered and like all the others was secularized by an independent Mexico by 1836.

The Mission Plaza

Spanish missions were always built around a central plaza, and this park is the most visible relic of the mission at Santa Cruz. The fountain in the center of the plaza is an echo of the original water source for the mission, which was fed by springs that still flow near upper High Street.

The Holy Cross parish church at the north end of the plaza was built in 1889 in an architectural style far from the Spanish roots of this site, and more familiar to the parish’s members at the time. The 1891 granite memorial arch in front of the church commemorates the 100th anniversary of the founding of the mission.

It Looks Like the Mission but It’s Not!

On the corner of Emmet and School Street, across from the adobe, is a building that looks like what you might expect to be a mission. This smaller-scale replica of what a mission chapel may have looked like was built in 1931. Inside the chapel is a nice little museum of mission history.

If you’re interested in stories about Mission Santa Cruz, read Mobile Ranger’s post about Father Quintana’s Grisly Death at Mission Santa Cruz.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Mission Hill Staircase Tour made possible by local history researcher Linda Rosewood. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.