established
Mission San Juan Capistrano.
Indigenous The region was populated by the
Acjachemen, referred to by the Spanish as
Juaneños, an
Indigenous Californian nation. They lived in the area for approximately 10,000 years, with some of their oldest villages being confirmed as over 9,600 years old. The mother village of
Putuidem was located in what is now San Juan Capistrano, as well as the village of
Acjacheme.
Spanish era The settlement that today is San Juan Capistrano began in 1776 when the Spanish
Franciscan missionary
Junípero Serra founded
Mission San Juan Capistrano, the seventh of the
Spanish missions in California. The mission was built less than 60 yards from the native village of
Acjacheme, which was exploited as a source of labor for the mission. The mission was named after Saint
John of Capistrano, a 14th-15th century Franciscan saint. The
1812 San Juan Capistrano earthquake resulted in the deaths of thirty-nine
Acjachemen people, thirty-one of whom were women, when the stone church at the Mission collapsed.
Mexican era at Mission San Juan Capistrano, 1876 The Mexican
Congress of the Union enacted the
secularization of the Californian missions in 1833. In the mission period, 4,317 natives had been baptized at the mission (1,689 adults and 2,628 children). In that same period, 3,158 of those baptized had died. Some of the native people who survived the mission period continued to live at the mission for a short period after the secularization act, while others settled in the surrounding areas. Each mission was appointed an administrator to oversee the transfer of the missions and their lands from the
Franciscan Order to the Mexican authorities.
Santiago Argüello, a member of a prominent family of
Californios, was appointed administrator of Mission San Juan Capistrano. During his tenure, the community was briefly renamed "San Juan de Argüello", similar to what happened to
San Juan Bautista in
Northern California, which was briefly renamed "San Juan de Castro" after its administrator
José Castro. In 1844, Don
Juan Forster and James McKinley purchased the former Mission San Juan Capistrano at public auction. Forster made his home there until 1864, when the mission was returned to the Catholic Church by President
Abraham Lincoln.
American era , 1895 Following the American
Conquest of California, San Juan remained a relatively small and rural community until the end of the 19th century. The It was considered an American town and incorporated into Orange County in 1876. Padre O'Sullivan arrived in San Juan Capistrano in 1910 to recuperate from a recent stroke. He became fascinated by Mission San Juan Capistrano and soon set to work on rebuilding it a section at a time. O'Sullivan repaired the roof of the Serra Chapel using
California sycamore logs to match those that were used in the original work. He brought in architect Arthur B. Benton of Los Angeles to strengthen the chapel walls through the addition of heavy
masonry buttresses. The centerpiece of the chapel restoration was its
retablo, imported from Barcelona in 1806 and donated by the Bishop of Los Angeles. The restoration of the mission resulted in the town's emergence as a tourist destination, owing to its historic architectural style and proximity to the sea. The mission was used often in Hollywood productions, such as
D. W. Griffith's 1910
western film The Two Brothers, the first film ever shot in Orange County. San Juan was incorporated as a city on April 19, 1961. From 2009 to 2017, the
cliff swallows did not make their famous
annual springtime return to Mission San Juan Capistrano, instead migrating to the
Chino Hills, north of San Juan. The swallows changed their route because the Mission is no longer the tallest building in the area due to
urban sprawl, and thus stopped attracting the swallows for nesting. Mission San Juan Capistrano embarked on a program to facilitate the return of the swallows, first by using swallow calls to attract the birds and then by building artificial swallow nests for the birds to use. As of 2017, the swallows have returned home to Mission San Juan Capistrano and are still celebrated each year at the town's annual Swallows Day Parade and Mercado Street Fair. In 2018, the town celebrated its 80th annual Swallows Day Parade and Fiesta de las Golondrinas (). ==Geography==