Mission San Miguel filled in the long gap between the missions at San Antonio and San Luis Obispo. the local Salinan Indians eagerly awaited the coming of the missionaries, because they head good things about the missions from their friends and relatives in other areas. On the day of the founding, July 25, 1797, fiftieth Indian children were baptized. San Migual was the sixteenth of the twenty-one Spanish missions in California.
A church and other needed buildings were quickly erected by the Indians. After only one month, though, there was trouble. The mission padre Father Antonio Horra, couldn't adjust to missionary life. He had to be sent back to Mexico. Father Horra was replaced by Father Juan Martin (who stayed for twenty-seven years).
By 1806, the mission complex was very productive. About 1,000 Indians lived nearby and worked for the mission. There was an adobe church, two long rows of workshops, granaries, and other storehouses. But disaster struck in 1806: a fire destroyed many of the buildings and their contents. All the hides, wool, and cloth that had been accumulated were lost along with six thousand bushels of wheat. The nearby missions helped San Migual by contributing clothing, tools, grain and other necessities; within a year, Mission San Migual was up and running!
Shortly after the fire, Father Martin began planning for a new tile roofed church. For many years the Indians made the thousands of large adobe bricks that would be needed. Some of them were even baked in ovens so they would dry faster (usually they were dried in the sun). The new church's actual construction didn't begin until 1816, but it only took two years to be completed because all the bricks were made ahead of time.
In 1820, Estevan Munras arrived; he was in charge of the church's interior painted decorations. (Father Martin and Munras were friends, and Munras offered to decorate the church at no charge) These decorations - the originals, not restored - still decorate the inside of the church today. The whole inside was painted with stencil patterns. The Indians did a lot of painting, and the paints were made from local materials. One of the reasons that San Migual is so special is that the inside of the church still looks pretty much as it did originally, and the painting is beautiful.
After Mexico became an independent country, the missions were "secularized", which means that the Catholic Church would no longer own the mission lands. Mission San Miguel was the last of the missions to be secularized in 1834. Father Martin was no longer in charge by this time and the last Franciscan priest left in 1841. The mission was owned by various people until 1859, when it was returned to the Catholic church. However, it wasn't until 1878 that the Mission was "reactivated" and a priest was again in residence.
Today, Mission San Miguel is an operating church and is visited by many school groups and other tourists. In addition to touring the church and other original buildings, you can visit the museum and gift shop.