Mission Soledad - The Lonely Mission

Tucked into the inland side of California's Coast Range Mission Soledad was a lonely and desolate place.

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In its forty six year history, almost thirty different priests were assigned to it. That is a turnover record that no other mission even comes close to. It was at Mission Soledad that Father Vincente Sarria wrote the first ever medical treatise in California. Father Sarria wrote a description of "how to perform a Caesarean Section" and distributed it to the Franciscans in all of the Misions. In the 18th Century in California the Franciscans were generally the most educated of all of the populace and they were often called upon to attend to difficult or complicated births.

 





 

 

 







Mission Soledad

Mission Soledad was nicknamed "The Lonely Mission." It may be the only mission named by one of the Native Californians. An unverifiable myth claims that when Gaspar de Portola first visited the site in 1769 he was greeted by a native woman who gave her name as "Soledad." Whether Portola misunderstood her or whether this woman had, prior to the visit of the first known Spaniard in that area, picked up one word of Spanish has never been sorted out.

The name as a religious representation represents Mary, on the day after Christ's death. Certainly there could not have been a more bereft figure than a mother, the day after her son's crucifixion.

The Eerie Image of Our Lady of Solitude

Mission Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is the only mission named after an object (Holy Cross) and not a saint, angel or religious event.

 

Although the original mission building was destroyed by a combination of Nature and Man many of it's artifacts were saved. The three statutes on the altar, Our Lady of Sorrows, Saint Joseph and Saint Michael were originally in the old church. The painting of our Lady of Guadalupe on the left rear wall of the church was done in Mexico in 1791 and came to the Mission in 1797.

Santa Cruz was the site of a somewhat spectacular and gruesome death of one of the Franciscans. Father Andres Quintana was known as a cruel disciplinarian and shortly after he died under mysterious circumstances some of the Natives claimed that they had not only killed, but in the process castrated the priest. The facts are still murky and likely the truth will never be known.

Mission Santa Cruz

 

This mission is an unfortunate object lesson in "what we almost lost." The pile of rubble in the picture is all that is visible of the original Mission Santa Cruz. After an earthquake in 1857 seriously damaged the church what remained was razed, and the present Holy Cross Church was built over the ruins. Several of the missions came perilously close to the same fate in the late 1800's. 

The present Mission Santa Cruz, seen below is a replica, about half the size of the original which was built in 1931. It is across the street from Holy Cross Church, which is built on the ruins of the original Mission Santa Cruz.