A Bell Lap Bike Ride of California

The last great bastion of the Native American in America was California.  White Americans searching for gold came in the middle 1800s.  More came to homestead building ranches over sprawling tracts of land in a region known for good weather and excellent growing conditions.  Most of this settlement was done without incident.  (Archaeologists will dispute that the settlement was peaceful.  Native Californians suffered high mortality rates due to European diseases brought by the White population and missionaries).

What helped California settle peacefully with the local inhabitants, unlike the Indian Wars that raged across the Great Plains States, was the work done by a group of Spanish Catholic missionaries from the Franciscan Order.   The Franciscans worked to join together the local native peoples with the waves of Americans coming to the West Coast as part of Manifest Destiny—the idea that America was destined to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and let no people stand in the way.  California became a state in 1850. 

The Franciscans built missions, with the help of native tribes, up and down the length of California.  Beginning in 1769 (Mission San Diego de Alcala) and concluding in 1833 (Mission San Francisco Solano) exactly 21 missions were built.  Each mission is a cross between a military outpost and religious structure.  The missions provided a place to find support, guidance, and protection for longtime residents and newly arrived Californians.  No matter the background, the mission was there to assimilate all peoples into the Franciscan way of life and Catholicism.  From the mission came the pueblo (town) and the presidio (fort).  Before long cities began to emerge: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco.   

The mission’s goal was to make people self-sufficient.  The mission Franciscans taught farming, animal husbandry, ranching, cooking and more.   Today the missions, each in their own way tell a detailed story of California history.  The missions last year hosted five million visitors.  Most missions are state parks, some are monasteries but each one still stands.  The “mission style” is still prominent in California construction with the Spanish tile roof being the main building element.

The missions were built from Southern California to the north in a pattern which put each mission at approximately 30 mile intervals or just about a day’s ride on horseback.  When complete the chain of missions would become the California Mission Trail.  The El Camino Real (“The Royal Road”) connects the missions on a 600 mile route through California.  It has bike lanes in most sections.  It is possible to ride from one mission to another anywhere between San Diego and San Francisco.  For example, a ride from Mission San Juan Capistrano to Mission San Luis Rey de Francia is about 34 miles one-way on the El Camino Real. 

In an effort to designate the road and to let travelers know they were following the correct route, a series of 450 bells resembling mission bells were placed along the road beginning in 1906.  In 2005 the California Department of Transportation initiated a restoration program for the road and the old bells.  Many of the original bells have been replaced with all new versions replicated from casts created from the 1906 bells. 

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