Oceanside - Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

History

This mission is named after a canonized monarch, Louis IX of France, who was admitted into the band of the saints because of his crusades against the heathens in 1297. It is the last of ten mission stations built by Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen and lies in the far south between the San Diego and San Juan Capistrano missions, some 5mi/8km east of the present town of Oceanside.

It was Father Antonio Peyri who in the years 1811-15 supervised the building of this mission church which holds 1000 people. The Moorish style and the tower with its red-painted window-sills, gables and pilasters give this church its very unusual appearance. Adjoining the church is the interior courtyard with a monastery; on one side of the church was the Indian village, on the other stood a military barracks which were found in every mission station. Below these buildings were a garden and a laundry.

After the usual neglect of the secularized buildings, a start was made in 1893 on restoring the mission, which had meanwhile become the property of the Catholic church. Today it serves as a seminary.

Items of interest

This, the largest and most beautiful mission station, possesses an interesting museum in the former monastery and in the workshops, where some paintings and wood sculptures from Mexico are well worth seeing. In the magnificent garden with its cloister is the first mastix tree (also known as the pepper tree, from Peru) to be planted in North America, as well as an Indian cemetery. The French visitor who had admired the Santa Barbara mission in 1840, considered that from an architectural point of view the mission of San Luis Rey de Francia was the most impressive and symmetrical in the whole of California.

Location

4050 Mission Avenue, Oceanside, from which place it is 5mi/8km away on the CA 76. From San Diego the distance is 33mi/53km.