San Fernando Mission to Mark 200th Birthday

So just how does one go about planning a 200th birthday celebration?

That’s the question a special committee has been pondering over the last four months in its quest to mark the bicentennial of the San Fernando Mission.

As the first European settlement in the area, the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana laid the foundation for the San Fernando Valley of today. To celebrate the pivotal role the mission has played in the region’s history, a series of events has been scheduled for the first weekend in September.

Planned by a 32-member committee appointed by City Councilman Richard Alarcon’s office, the celebration will include a candlelight procession to the mission, a morning parade, arts exhibits, Aztec dancers, salsa bands, mariachis and a Sunday Mass officiated by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

Couples married at the mission will also be invited to renew their wedding vows during a special ceremony at the Memory Gardens in Brand Park, once mission property. Organizers plan to release 150 doves during a separate ceremony to honor the 2,000 Native Americans interred at the mission cemetery.

“The San Fernando Mission is special because it stands as a sign to people that we have a past and we have a future,” said Thom Davis, an adjunct professor of history at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and a past vice president of the California Missions Studies Assn. “But you can’t understand the mission unless you understand why they came and who they came to serve.”

Toward that end, participants at a symposium to be held at the mission Sept. 6 will examine the Native Americans and friars of the mission as well as the outpost’s economic life and its role in the next millennium.

Construction of the mission was part of an order by the king of Spain to claim territory by building settlements along California’s coast.

Father Junipero Serra was handpicked by the king to oversee the missions’ construction, and he planned to build the structures a day’s walk from one another on the 650-mile El Camino Real. The San Fernando Mission was the 17th of 21 missionary outposts and the main stop for travelers between Los Angeles and Ventura.

Father Fermin Lasuen selected the San Fernando Mission’s site because of the availability of water and the friendliness of the area’s Native Americans, who would later help build the mission. Lasuen inaugurated the mission in 1797 by raising a large cross and saying Mass.

The mission eventually became home to a successful cattle ranch and vineyard, and in later years was used as an army barracks, a hotel and a pig farm. It was abandoned by the priests in 1835. The mission became a working church again in 1923, but the chapel was destroyed in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and was later rebuilt.

Through it all, the mission has managed to survive, and continues to serve as a favorite wedding and tourist spot, among other uses.

“It’s like a beacon to me,” Davis said. “The same hospitality offered to travelers 200 years ago is still being offered today at the mission.”

For additional information on the bicentennial celebration, contact Alarcon’s office at (818) 756-8409 or (213) 847-7777. To reserve seating at the Sept. 6 symposium, contact Kevin Feeney of the San Fernando Mission at (818) 361-0186.