On Sunset Highways: A Book of Motor Rambles in California

by Thos. D. Murphy

This brings us to the point to which the foregoing is but the barest outline—the founding of the Mission of San Gabriel Archangel near the city of Los Angeles on September 8, 1771. Twenty-six years later to a day the second mission within easy reach of the city was established—San Fernando Rey de Espana, being the seventeenth of the twenty-one Franciscan religious houses on the California coast. The two missions near the city—San Gabriel, six miles to the east, and San Fernando, twenty miles northwest—will be among the first attractions to the motorist in roving about Los Angeles, and we visited both several times before undertaking our tour of the King's Highway. Each has much of interest and may well serve to create a desire for an acquaintance with the remainder of these romantic memorials of early days in the Golden State.

San Gabriel is a little, dust-browned hamlet nestling under giant pepper and eucalyptus trees, lying a half mile off the splendid boulevard that bears the same name. It has but a few hundred people and is quite unimportant in a business way. It is a quiet place, surrounded by the wide sweep of orange groves, and would attract little notice were it not for the plain, almost rude, structure that rears its heavy buttressed walls directly by the roadside. It is a long and narrow building of large square bricks, covered with stucco which has taken the hue of old ivory from the long procession of years that have passed over it. Along the top of the front wall is a row of moss-green bells, each in its arched stone niche, which still chime melodious notes at vesper time and which lend a peculiarly picturesque appearance to the unique facade. True, the mission has been much restored since the adobe walls of the original structure were reared in 1771. The winter rains, earthquakes, and hostile Indians, all wrought havoc on the building; the arched roof was thrown down by the quake of 1812 and was replaced by one of beams and tiles, which was later superseded by the present shingle covering. The elaborate ceiling was erected in 1886, but seems somewhat out of keeping with the severe simplicity of the original design.

SAN GABRIEL MISSION
From Photograph by Putnam & Valentine

It has been a parish church since the American conquest in 1846, though its old-time glory vanished and for a period it was almost forgotten. But the troops of tourists who came yearly to California rescued it from oblivion. The coming of the electric car, which clangs past its door, brought crowds daily; and when the motor arrived on the scene, old San Gabriel became a shrine of pilgrimage such as it never was in its palmiest days. Now a brown-robed priest welcomes you at the door, collects a modest fee—to be devoted to maintenance and restoration—and conducts you about every part of the ancient building. He leads you to the roof and shows you the bells at close range, and you may as a special favor be allowed to test their musical qualities. They are Spanish bells, older than the mission, and are looked upon by the fathers with a pride that verges on reverence. Then you will be shown the curios, the relics, paintings, vestments, old manuscripts, and books, some of doubtful value and authenticity and others of real antiquity and importance. You will be given a glimpse into the quiet burying ground, where many of the fathers are at rest and beyond which is the sheen of orange groves and the blue peaks of the Sierras. The monster grapevine that supplied the cellars of the old padres will not be overlooked and many rude utensils of early days may be seen scattered about the place. It is all very quaint and interesting, this bit of old-world mediaevalism transplanted to the new world by the western sea and about which has grown up one of the most enlightened and prosperous communities in the whole country.

You will be told as much of its story as you may wish to hear; how one time this fertile plain about the mission was tilled by the Indians whom the padres had instructed and partially civilized—at one time as many as five thousand of them. They raised vast herds of cattle, estimated from eighty to one hundred and twenty thousand, and twenty thousand horses and forty thousand sheep were numbered in their possessions at the height of their prosperity. Allowing for probable exaggeration, the wealth of the mission was undoubtedly great, reaching two million dollars in 1842. Shortly after, this was confiscated by the Mexican Government and the ensuing war with the United States marked the end of San Gabriel's prosperity.

When the town of Los Angeles was founded during the palmy days of the mission, a chapel was built there by the fathers and it stands to-day, time-stained and demurely unpretentious, in the midst of the bustling metropolis that has grown up around it.

But San Gabriel to-day has an added interest—the result of one of the happy inspirations which come periodically to Frank Miller of Riverside—in the Mission Play first given in the winter of 1910. It occurred to this loyal Californian that the romantic zeal and self-sacrifice that led to the foundation of the missions and the wealth of historic incident connected with their active career would furnish splendid material for a play—or, more properly, a pageant. The idea was presented to Mr. John S. McGroarty of Los Angeles, editor of the Pacific Coast Magazine, who combined the necessary qualities of historian and poet. He entered zealously into the plan and in due time the libretto was written. A playhouse was built—somewhat crude and cheaply constructed, it is true—directly opposite the old mission. It was not, however, inharmonious with the idea and spirit of the play and was surrounded by an open-air corridor or ambulatory containing small models of the twenty-one missions as they appeared in their most prosperous days. The actors were mostly local people who, during the performance, lived in the cottages of the village or near-by towns.

The play—or pageant—has but little plot, depending on scenic effect, rich in life and color, and on a wealth of interesting incident. We saw it during the first week of its performance and our only disappointment was the clearly inappropriate ending—but evidently the writer recognized this defect, for when we visited the play next season, the last act had been rewritten more in harmony with the spirit of the subject.