Mission San Antonio de Padua

One of California's most isolated missions, preserved from development only because it now sits inside a U.S. Army base, Mission San Antonio de Padua also built one of the earliest water-powered mills and irrigation systems in the state.

Father Junipero Serra founded Mission San Antonio de Padua on July 14, 1771, the third mission established in the chain that would eventually stretch the length of Spanish California, choosing a remote valley in what is now Monterey County and naming it for St. Anthony of Padua. Missionaries baptized and relocated Salinan Native Americans to the site, putting them to forced labor building and farming the mission under the coercive conditions typical of the mission system.

The mission developed an unusually sophisticated water-powered grist mill and an extensive irrigation aqueduct system, among the earliest of their kind in California, to support its agricultural operations. The Salinan population declined sharply over the following decades from introduced diseases and the harsh conditions of mission life, a pattern repeated across the California mission system.

Mexico's secularization of the California missions in 1834 stripped the site of its land and church authority, and the buildings fell into ruin for nearly a century. Franciscans regained possession in 1928 and began restoration, with major funding from the Hearst family completing much of the work in the 1940s and 1950s. Today the mission sits within Fort Hunter Liggett, a U.S. Army installation, whose presence has ironically kept the surrounding land free of the development that has grown up around most other California missions.