Spanish Franciscan missionaries populated California beginning in early 1770s as they began to establish a system of settlements known as missions to provide travel destinations, agricultural endeavors, and places of worship. The missions were also a means of establishing Spanish dominance over this new region. Padres at one such mission, San Gabriel de Archangel, sent emissaries to what is now San Bernardino in search of grazing areas for their cattle herds. At what is now the City of Loma Linda, they located an outpost, known as an estancia where they stored crops and welcomed a traveling priest.
Majordomo Pedro Alvarez organized a crew to build an irrigation ditch to bring water from the mouth of the Mill Creek about 12 miles away to the Serrano village of Guachama. Within one season, the people of the village were raising crops, utilizing the water from the Mill Creek Zanja.
In 1830, the estancia was relocated about one mile east where the padres began construction of what is now known as Asistencia. It was never finished as the Mexican governor of California declared all church properties secularized. The mission fathers abandoned the site in 1834, leaving behind an adobe structure of 14 rooms including a chapel.
- Discovery Highlights and Destinations
Asistencia – 26930 Barton Road in Redlands – The estancia structures had long since mostly disintegrated when in the 1920s, as a side bar of the California mission revitalization movement, the San Bernardino County purchased the site which had gone through at least four owners since 1834. With the Works Progress Administration, the county re-created the Asistencia on the old footprint. Today, the structure is owned by Redlands Conservancy which operates it as the organization’s headquarters and as an events venue and public benefit location.