remembering San Diego

 A few days ago I was looking through an online sketchbook put together by Leslie Conklin Fehling on Facebook. She included sketches of the Point Loma Lighthouse and Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego, California — that made me wish I had been sketching back when we lived there in the early 1970s. I took photos at the time with an old instamatic camera; unfortunately the photo album was destroyed when a basement flooded.

Just one week after we got married, Bill first took me to Presidio Park. I had mistakenly believed that the structure now standing there was a reproduction of the original mission church. While this is the actual location of California’s first mission, this structure is a museum building built in 1928-29 by a local businessman who wanted to preserve the history of the site. Nothing remains of the original mission or presidio (one thing that fascinated me at the time was the archeological dig going on just down the hill).

The presidio (Spanish fort) was begun in May 1769; Mission San Diego de Alcala was established on this site July 16 (my birthday!) of the same year. But in 1774 the mission was moved a few miles away up the valley (where it continues as an active Catholic diocese today).

We sometimes bought lunch and ate it on the lovely presidio grounds. Bill carved our initials in a heart on a tree down the hill — when we took our kids to California on a vacation years later, we found that the tree had been removed, possibly for more parking.

Presidio Park’s Junipero Serra Museum, 1929

This is where I began my love of old Spanish missions. During a trip to San Antonio in 2012, I was able to do several mission sketches; someday when traveling is back to normal I hope we can take the Spanish missions trail from San Xavier to Corpus Christi.