Last weekend (Sat, Feb 17, 2018) I took a little road trip to the La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, California. For those not in the area, that’s pronounced Lom-POKE. Unlike the missions in Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara, which are still active churches, this mission is a pure historic park.
The Welcome plaque which appears heading along the path which opens up to reveal the mission and the animal pens.
The mission itself was reconstructed starting in the 1930s. Based on the visual records the Welcome Center shares, by that point in time the mission was little more than a couple of rubble walls. So pretty much everything about the park today is a reconstruction — though there were some cool original tallow vats along side a recreation.
Original tallow vats, used to render fat for candles and soaps. The opening in the front is where the fire was built and stoked, while the large bowl on top is where cows and pigs were rendered.
I come from the East Coast, and I have to admit that I had never heard of the missions before – built in the late 1700s roughly one day’s walk from each other up along the coast. Pretty much, as far as my public education history was concerned, California didn’t really exist until WWII except for that little gold rush episode. Imagine my surprise when I move here and discover a whole new history! I had no idea there was any sort of Civil War activity in California, but there was! That’s for another adventure though…
The Mission Bells. The top one is wooden – which apparently common until it could be replaced with a metal one.
In the image with the Mission Bells, to the right is the roof of the chapel itself. The Featured Image for this post is an image of the main alter with the pulpit off to the right. You can see the rough-hewn walls in the image quite nicely. If you start to follow me, you’ll quickly discover that I love images with patterns. I went through the Winchester Mansion and was taking pictures of the gorgeous details on the door hardware, for which the guide was giving me bemused looks the entire time. The details within the chapel were similarly captivating for me, and I’m sharing the image I took of the beams which are holding up the floor of the raised galley in the back of the chapel. I am not sure if this raised area is actually a galley, so if you know for sure please feel free to leave a comment and let me know better. šĀ IĀ love the vining pattern on the bottom (seen at the top of the image most clearly) and the arched pattern on the sides. Lovely!
Being a wool spinner myself, one of my FAVORITE areas of most any historical re-enactment site is the textiles area. These missions, being pretty much the vanguard of European civilization (good and ill) into the area, were also heavily into creating the goods said civilization considered necessary. This included candles and soap, clothing, metal works, and more. The mission had a room dedicated to illustrating the fabric arts.Ā One of the example carders they had featured native giant thistle-type burs being used as the teeth of the carder. I thought that was amazingly cool! I had, for all too brief a time, my great-great grandmother’s (Levicy Prather) wool carders from the late 1800s. They even had seeds still in them! Alas, when I moved to California they were lost. Anyway, I couldn’t resist getting some shots of the carders on display.
Of course they also had a loom, and I played around trying to get good pictures of the loom strings just to see if I could. I rather liked the results!
The doors were each one unique. I took a lot of pictures of doors, but liked this one the most. The image includes the lock face plus studding.
The weather was gorgeous for a February day, somewhere in the high 70s, with a clear sky and lots of bright, harsh sunlight. Overall, I enjoyed the mission but my favorite part? All the wildlife running around everywhere! I saw hundreds of quail, some rabbits, ground squirrels, even a pocket gopher stealing grain from the horses!
A pair of quail, female on left and male on right, running around the grounds.
There were a number of bath and laundry pools on the grounds, but this empty one featured a tenacious little plant clinging boldly to the mortar between the bricks.
All in all, a good place to visit and if you’re in the area be sure to stop by. It’s not a particularly lengthy visit, with no timeline you need to follow or guide you have to keep up with. The history is nicely presented but not overbearing and entirely based on signage (no audio tour or the like), the setting is gorgeous, it’s easy to get to, and we didn’t even have to pay for parking. I might back to take more pictures of the variety of the wildlife boldy running all over the place.
Those were the highlights of the last nerd adventureĀ I went on. I hope you enjoyed it. Please share with your friends so I know someone is getting a kick out of my nerdom and thus will be encouraged to post more with lots of gorgeous, quirky photos.
Until next time – Adventure On!