Shipbucket

California Mission San Juan Bautista (1797)

Why draw California Missions? Well, they form an important part of my region's modern history. After visiting most of them, they are pretty interesting and a number are fairly remote in areas that allow one to feel California before we built the hell out of this place.

San Juan Bautista is one of those remote missions. I've started with it simply because it was the first I found enough info to start drawing.

Backstory:
The settling of California by Europeans began in the 1770's by Spain with a LOT of help by the Church. The idea was to claim the lands on the West Coast in North America to help control trade to the Orient. Russia was also competing and in California set up one outpost not far from me at a place later called Fort Ross in Sonoma County (that's another story). By the early 1800's Mexico had separated, become independent, the missions were secularized, and the general Mission Period came to a general close by the 1830's. The 22 missions by and large fell into ruins but were later resurrected by nostalgic locals not wanting to loose their region's roots.

Built entirely of local materials, the Missions were supposed to support themselves economically which was somewhat done via cattle and trade in various crops. Another critical element was the conversion of the local Native Americans to Catholicism. This in the end was fairly successful but at a nasty cost. The Missionaries inadvertently practiced genocide by introducing European diseases and wiping out much of the cultural heritage.

CraigH

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

Great work and back story

_________________
___________________________________________

Best Regards,
Aart.

Projects:

The Kingdom of Rochfort in FD

Great work Craig.

Nice work!

Awesome!

Excellent work Craig, but you forgot to clean the green colour from the lower captions (North elevation, and West elevation of church)

_________________
Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Wow. I honestly thought this idea was going to fizzle out when I saw how infrequent the replies were. Glad to see Bucketeers contributing such beautiful works.

_________________
Fasismi? Ei! Natsismin? Ei! Kommunismi? Ei! Elostelu!

When I did all my buildings, the only one I was able to save. Its a bit pixelated since I saved it on facebook.

Might be nice, but at this moment it's resized.

Indeed it is, but the original is on my old computer which is being fixed thanks to some very nasty malware and the computer tech says its best to have the memory wiped clean.