with
Easter decoration Following its creation in 1797, San Juan's population grew quickly. By 1803, there were 1,036 Native Americans living at the mission. Ranching and farming activity had moved apace, with 1,036 cattle, 4,600 sheep, 22 swine, 540 horses and 8 mules counted that year. At the same time, the harvest of wheat, barley and corn was estimated at 2,018 fanegas, each of about 220 pounds. Father
Pedro Estévan Tápis (who had a special talent for music) joined Father
Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta, at Mission San Juan Bautista in 1815 to teach singing to the Native Americans. He employed a system of notation developed in Spain that uses varied colors or textures for polyphonic music, usually (from bottom to top) solid black, solid red, black outline (sometimes solid yellow) and red outline (or black outline when yellow was used). His choir of Native American boys performed for many visitors, earning the San Juan Bautista Mission the nickname "the Mission of Music." Two of his handwritten choir books are preserved at the San Juan Bautista Museum. When Father Tapis died in 1825 he was buried on the mission grounds. The town of San Juan Bautista, which grew up around the mission, expanded rapidly during the
California Gold Rush and continues to be a thriving community today. The mission is situated adjacent to the
San Andreas Fault, and has suffered damage from numerous
earthquakes, such as those of 1800 and 1906. However, the mission was never entirely destroyed at once. It was restored initially in 1884, and then again in 1949 with funding from the
Hearst Foundation. The three-bell
campanario, or "bell wall," located by the church entrance, was fully restored in 2010. An unpaved stretch of the original
El Camino Real, just east of the mission, lies on a fault scarp. Although initially
secularized in 1835, the church was reconsecrated by the
Catholic Church in 1859, and continues to serve as a parish of the
Diocese of Monterey. The mission includes a cemetery, with the remains of over 4,000 Native American converts and Europeans buried there. The mission and its grounds were featured prominently in the 1958
Alfred Hitchcock film
Vertigo. Associate producer Herbert Coleman's daughter Judy Lanini suggested the mission to Hitchcock as a filming location. A steeple, added sometime after the mission's original construction and secularization, had been demolished following a fire, so Hitchcock added a bell tower using scale models, matte paintings, and trick photography at the
Paramount studio in Los Angeles. The tower does not resemble the original steeple. The tower's staircase was assembled inside a studio. ==Gallery==