Sonoma - Mission San Francisco Solano de Sonoma

The last of the mission stations and the only one to be built during the period of Mexican rule, it bears the name of one of the Spanish missionaries in Peru. After secularization General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo went to the trouble of nominating the governor Figueroa commandant of North California as a precautionary measure against the Russian advance. At the same time Figueroa became administrator of the mission and was to maintain it as a buffer against the Russians. For reasons which are not known the church collapsed. In its place was built a parish church, which was also destroyed but was rebuilt in the years 1911-13. The nearby monastery built in 1825 survived, and is thus the oldest building in Sonoma. It houses a museum