The mission stands in the center of the wide plain at the head of the valley, around which sweeps a circle of green hills and mountains, their rounded tops and rugged peaks lending infinite variety to the skyline. On one hand blue vapors softened the snowy summits; on the other, the sky bent down, crystal clear, to the gently undulating contour of the hills. The fertile plain was being rapidly brought under cultivation—dotted with fruit-tree groves and ranch-houses, with here and there a village—and this was before the coming of the waters of the great Owens River Aqueduct. It would take a bold flight of the imagination to picture the future of the San Fernando Valley—anything I might write would be ancient history before my book could get to the press. The whole plain will become a garden of wondrous beauty; only the mountains and hills will abide unchanged.
The history of the old mission which has been engaging our attention was not important as compared with many of its contemporaries. And, speaking of history, I have been wondering whether I should burden my pages with dates and incidents concerning these ancient memorials, but perhaps a short sketch, given in as few words as may tell the bare outlines of each mission as we visit it, will be of service to pilgrims who follow us.
San Fernando was seventeenth of the California missions in order of founding, and was considered a necessity by the padres to fill in the gap between San Gabriel and Ventura, being about thirty miles from either. Padre Lasuen performed the dedicatory ceremonies on September 8, 1797, and by the end of the year, fifty-five neophytes had been enlisted. These, in three years, had increased to three hundred, and the record reads that they possessed five hundred horses and about as many sheep, and harvested a crop of one thousand bushels of grain. The first church, built in 1802, was almost destroyed by the great quake of 1812, which left its impress on nearly every mission of the entire chain. The church was repaired and its shattered remnants are what we see to-day.
San Fernando never prospered greatly, though at one time there were nearly a thousand Indians on its rolls. It was cramped for want of productive land and its decline began many years before the act of confiscation by the Mexicans. This occurred in 1834, when the Government agent computed the wealth of the mission at around one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, of which the "liquors" represented more than seven thousand. In January, 1847, General John C. Fremont took possession of the scanty remains of the property and the active history of San Fernando was ended. Mr. George Wharton James, to whose interesting book, "The Old Missions of California," I am indebted for much of the foregoing information, tells of an important incident in San Fernando's history as follows: