California missions spotlight: Santa Clara boasted the most weddings, births and burials
Santa Clara de Asís, Santa Clara
Eighth mission
1777
Explore all of California’s 21 famed missions >>
This might be the most moved and rebuilt of all the missions. It changed location five times in its first 50 years yet became so busy that in its 60 years of operation it registered more baptisms (8,536), marriages (2,498) and burials (6,809) than any other California mission. It also gave birth to a college. Santa Clara University, a private Catholic university founded in the Gold Rush days of 1851, now owns and surrounds the mission. But in the 1850s, after the Franciscans were gone and before the university had matured, historians say the mission church was operated as a dance hall. The current mission church, which serves as the university chapel, was built in the 1920s to resemble an 1825 structure.
Nearby: Near the church on the Santa Clara campus is the De Saisset Museum (500 El Camino Real, www.scu.edu/deSaisset; free), with exhibits on California art and history, including Native American artifacts predating the missions and Spanish colonial religious art. It closes in summer.
Info: 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara; (408) 554-4023, www.scu.edu/visitors/mission. Driving distance from Los Angeles City Hall: 350 miles northwest.
From the archives:
In 1958, The Times wrote about Father Magin Catalá of Mission Santa Clara de Asís.
In 2006, The Times reported on how one of the state’s first universities was born at the site of the Mission Santa Clara.
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