Santa Cruz Mission Museum

The only part of the original Santa Cruz Mission that still stands is the seven room museum of Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park.  This building was originally seventeen rooms long.  Construction started in 1822 and was finished in 1824.  It was built out of adobe bricks by Native American workers, and it had a tile roof with redwood beams for support.  Originally, only higher status Mission workers with special skills lived in this building, with one room for each family.  Soon after the mission system was secularized in 1834 (transferred from the Catholic church to civilians), the remaining native people moved out, abandoning their rooms or selling them to Californios (California born Mexican families).  Seven rooms have been restored to show what life

was like at the time the native people lived there.  The original seven rooms have survived because they were continuously lived in and maintained from 1824 to 1983, when the building became a State Historic Park.

 

In room one, there is an earlier foundation, probably built around 1812. 

            Room two depicts a diorama of the Santa Cruz Mission at its height in 1830.  At this time in the Mission's history, there would have been priest's quarters, dormitories for boys and girls, soldiers' quarters, housing for the native Americans, workshops for craftspeople and granaries for storage.

            Room three provides an overview of the Mission System.

            The corridor of the adobe building was as much a living space as the rooms themselves and would have been an active place.  Woven willow branches bound with rawhide and covered with mud and straw make up the underside of the roof.  Iron was hard to come by, so rawhide strips were used for construction instead of nails.  These layers support the only waterproof part of the building:  the clay roof tiles.  The tiles protect the adobe walls from rain.

            Room four shows how archeologists peeled back layers to reveal what life was like for the people who lived in these buildings.

            Room five depicts what all the rooms would have looked like when the mission was active.  High ranking members of the working community were rewarded with a room while most people continued to live in their traditional thatched houses.  This room served as the bedroom, kitchen and living room for a family with a ladder leading up to a loft.  The fire pit in the middle of the room provided light and heat and was used for cooking.  The loft was used to store food where the smoke from the fire pit would drive away mice and rats.  Most people slept on grass mats rolled out on the floor.  Beds were reserved for only the most high ranking people.  Both Spanish and California Indian culture are represented in these rooms.  Ceramic bowls, tortillas and metal tools are Spanish in origin.  The shells, baskets, bows and arrows are items brought by the native people when they joined the Mission.  The people who lived here tried to maintain some of their old culture while adapting to a new life at the mission.  

            Room Six displays some of the everyday work done at the Mission.  The Missions tried to be as self sufficient as possible by growing or making everything they needed.  Extra food, clothing, hides and tallow could be sold to townspeople or soldiers in the presidios, or could be traded with passing ships for supplies like paper, chocolate, sugar and glass.   Woman's jobs included washing, culling and grinding grain, sifting flour, spinning yarn and sewing.  Men worked as tanners, shoemakers, farmers, cowboys, weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, brick makers and masons.  Children performed simple chores like weeding the garden, scaring birds from crops, or carrying firewood.  

            Adobe buildings are very easy to modify and this one has been changed many times to suit the needs of the people who lived here.  The doors are so short because during restoration the floors were raised to make the building wheelchair accessible and to protect the archaeological artifacts below.