Mission’s Old Stones to Get New Strength

Orange County’s first settlement, the 213-year-old Mission San Juan Capistrano, is this month beginning a 10-year, multimillion-dollar stabilization effort to make it earthquake-resistant, a spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Orange confirmed Wednesday.

Father Lawrence J. Baird, director of communications for the diocese, said the long-range project is designed “to preserve Mission San Juan Capistrano from the type of damage that Mission San Gabriel suffered during the Whittier earthquake.” That 1987 quake so severely damaged the historic San Gabriel structure that it has been closed to the public.

A ceremony announcing the stabilization project at Mission San Juan Capistrano will be held on the mission grounds Saturday night.

In an interview Wednesday, Brian McInerney, tourism director of Mission San Juan Capistrano, said the announcement will be for a 10-year project “that will cost several million dollars.” McInerney said the exact cost has not been determined.

According to Baird, funds for the stabilization work will come from tourist income and from private donations.

“This will be the biggest and most extensive restoration campaign with private funds for any mission in the United States,” said McInerney. “Work will be done to keep the mission as accurate and authentic as possible. This is no attempt to build new structures or to make an ‘old town.’ ”

In conjunction with the stabilization work, the mission has employed a Greek archeologist to study the ruins this month and make detailed recommendations. Baird said the specialist, Kalliope Theocharidou, is “respected throughout the world for her expertise in the preservation and restoration of ancient historical buildings.” She arrived in Orange County on Aug. 1 and will be at the mission until Aug. 19, studying the ruins and existing buildings and making recommendations on how they can be strengthened.

“I had studied photographs of the mission before I came here from Greece,” Theocharidou said on Wednesday. “When I got here, I found the problem was worse than I expected. It is urgent that stabilization work be done quickly.”

Stone of Poor Quality

Theocharidou said a major problem with the old structures is that “differing types of stones of very poor quality” were used by the Spanish padres and Indians in 1776 and subsequent years. The old stones are now deteriorating, she said.

Stabilization work will include strengthening those old stones by having them treated by liquid chemicals, Theocharidou said.

Theocharidou, who has a doctorate in architectural history from the University of Athens, said she has found Mission San Juan Capistrano to be a visual treat.

“The first day I was here, I told the people here, ‘This place is an original. Keep it as an original. It must be preserved,’ ” she said.

She added that she thinks Mission San Juan Capistrano is the most authentically preserved of any of the California missions. “That is why it is so important to preserve it,” she said.

The San Juan Capistrano mission was the seventh in a chain of 21 established by Spanish priests during the first years of European settlement of California. Father Junipero Serra and Spanish soldier Gaspar de Portola led an expedition from Mexico to begin the chain of missions. The first was in San Diego in 1769, and Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1776.

A start on a mission at San Juan Capistrano, at a different site, was made in 1775 but abandoned when the priests and soldiers had to return to San Diego because of an Indian uprising there. The current site was chosen by the colonists because a tribe of California Indians, later called Juaneno Indians, lived at the confluence of two creeks there.

Archeological Digs Continue

The mission is open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $2 for adults and $1 for children, and the proceeds go to upkeep and restoration of the property.

McInerney said the stabilization work will go hand-in-hand with continuing archeological digs and studies on the mission grounds. He noted that new facts about California history have been learned in recent years from studies of the mission. For instance, two years ago archeologists unearthed sophisticated metal-producing furnaces built more than 200 years ago on the mission grounds.

“This was a major historical find,” McInerney said. “This was the first metal foundry in California. It showed how really important this mission was in the chain of missions. This mission was the first settlement in Orange County, and so it is the Plymouth Rock of Orange County. But the mission was very important to all of the state. It was busy and prosperous, with technology such as the metal foundry. It was very progressive for its time. This mission and the area surrounding it here on the West Coast are as important in history as some of the early American cities on the East Coast.”

Nicholas Magalousis, an adjunct professor of archeology at Chapman College in Orange and the resident archeologist at Mission San Juan Capistrano, said Wednesday that the forthcoming stabilization work is of major historical importance.

‘World-Class Historical Site’

“This is a very large project,” he said. “It will involve researchers, contractors and the business community--a cross-pollination of work. It appears that this will be one of the largest preservation projects in the state of California.”

Magalousis said the project has international implications because “Mission San Juan Capistrano is a world-class historical site, known around the world.” He said that as the work unfolds, he and other archeologists expect to learn more from the artifacts found on the mission grounds.

“Some of the information on the old missions was not recorded, and so we learn about things as they are uncovered,” he said.

McInerney said the goal of the stabilization work is to make the buildings very durable so that scores of generations can visit the site.

“We want to make this mission last another 1,000 years,” he said.