Notice the white façade of Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, first of California's twenty-one Spanish missions. Father Junípero Serra established the original mission in 1769 on Presidio Hill, but it was relocated here to Mission Valley in 1774 to access better farmland and fresh water from the San Diego River. The iconic white façade and bell wall you see today date to a 1931 reconstruction; earthquakes, neglect, and secularization had reduced the original structure to ruins.
At its peak in the early 1800s, this mission held hundreds of Kumeyaay neophytes — Indigenous converts living under the padres' strict control — who built the irrigation systems, farmed the fields, and constructed the buildings. In 1775, a Kumeyaay revolt ended in the killing of Father Luis Jayme, the first Christian martyr in California. The mission was secularized under Mexican rule in 1833, its lands distributed to rancho owners.
Today it functions as an active Roman Catholic parish and a California Historical Landmark, grappling openly with the complex legacy of the mission era.