Mission San Buenaventura and Mission Compound Site

Mission San Buenaventura and its surrounding compound occupy about 29.4 acres in the city of San Buenaventura, California. The mission was the ninth of 21 founded in upper California by the Franciscan Fathers, with building activity running from its founding in 1782 until secularization in 1836. The brick church, about 40 by 140 feet, was dedicated in 1809 and keeps an exterior much like the original. Around it, the ground holds foundations of numerous Mission Period outbuildings, including excavated remains of a ten-room structure, a well, a gate, garden walls and five buildings found in 1974, one of which may be an earlier mission church. An aqueduct filtration building, settling tank and reservoir also survive. Beneath these layers lie prehistoric remains from a Chumash rancheria. The district was listed because these remains are the only archaeological source of information on Mission Period San Buenaventura and could reveal settlement patterns across the California mission system.