Mission Cycle-able

Published Cycle California, May 2021

Sometimes in biking those areas far from traffic and pristine you can forget bicycling can be a way to explore and enjoy more than redwood groves and ocean views.

Nick Peterson, Jim Zavagno and myself embarked in September 2020 on two bike journeys within a couple of weeks to four Bay Area missions. We chose those landmarks not to celebrate or honor the missions but rather because the sites are centuries-old and historically familiar. However, we found that three of the missions have been completely rebuilt.

The California missions are no longer glorious symbols of the past but rather reminders of oppression. Junipero Serra, now the personification of such, was a friar in the order of St. Francis, which in Spanish is San Francisco. The bay of that name was first christened by a Franciscan padre, and the subsequent city’s name remains very much with us today.

For our first expedition connecting Mission San Jose with Mission Santa Clara, we crossed over the Dumbarton Bridge from Menlo Park on a Sunday and followed the paved Alameda Creek Trail to Mission Boulevard and eventually eastward to Mission San Jose, also the name of the surrounding town. The mission itself is a massive recreation that betrays its 1985 complete reconstruction. Circling around the end of the bay, we followed the paved Coyote Creek Trail, no mystery as to that creek’s naming, and cut over to the Guadalupe River Trail.

The original Guadalupe River is in Spain was where the Virgin Mary appeared to a cow herder in the early 1300s. In 1531, the Virgin Mary likewise appeared to a peasant on a hill in Mexico City. Because that vision recalled the earlier one, the town that was formed became known as Villa de Guadalupe. In 1828 it was renamed Guadalupe Hidalgo and, 20 years later in 1848, was where the treaty ending the Mexican-American War was signed on February 2, a couple weeks after James Marshall picked up gold nuggets at the American River. Alongside the bike-pedestrian path, San Jose’s Guadalupe River is a slow moving slough flanked by thick vegetation as if it were a remote bayou. Along the path is a mastodon sculpture in honor of bones discovered nearby. The sculpture is appropriately named Lupe for the river.

Past the San Jose airport, we biked to the corner on De La Cruz Blvd where Memorial Cross Park once held a giant concrete cross. San Jose’s Mission Santa Clara had previously stood at that spot but flooding of the nearby river caused the relocation of the church. A lawsuit in 2016 caused the removal of the cross and signage, though the street is still called De La Cruz (“Of the Cross”).

Mission Santa Clara was named for Saint Clare of Assisi, a contemporary follower of St. Francis. The mission was rebuilt in 1929 with an ornate basilica appearance. The mission grounds border San Jose, founded in 1777, and a college took over the buildings in 1851 as a town was begun with the same name.

The Battle of Santa Clara—barely memorialized by a small plaque--was fought on January 2, 1847, on now busy El Camino Real, near the crossing of Saratoga Creek. The two-hour battle, with few casualties, led to a truce six days later between Mexican and American militias with the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty still a year away. We retuned to Palo Alto, finishing our loop of 72 miles.

We next planned a Mission Dolores to Mission San Rafael loop. Parking at the Presidio, we launched from the cross marking the Presidio’s founding, September 17, 1776, also a special year on the other side of the continent.

Getting to Mission Dolores meant biking first the Lovers Lane paved pathway over an increasingly steep ridge, then finding our way over another ridge while attempting to avoid the busier streets. Mission Dolores has retained its original look though it adjoins to a much larger ornate basilica, now mistaken by many for the mission itself. We found a less vertical way back by using “The Wiggle” green bike markings to get to the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park, where cars are prohibited for the time being, and past the Velo Rouge Café on Arguello Blvd. Few bikers were using the bay side pathway lane of the foggy Golden Gate Bridge and even fewer pedestrians as we crossed into Marin County sunshine. Normally touristy downtown Sausalito was practically deserted as a result no doubt of closed shops and restaurants.

We reached San Rafael by going over two major inland roadway climbs. The mission sits above the town. The original structures are completely gone, replaced by another ornate basilica, built in 1949. St. Raphael was an archangel, associated with healing, appropriately so as Mision San Rafael Arcangel was built as a hospital for Native Americans, many of whom sickened and died from European sourced diseases. Missions San Miguel (Michael) and San Gabriel, two of California’s 21 missions, were also named for archangels, beings not subject to the same possible reproach as historical persons.

Had the Franciscan missions only been used to virtually imprison the indigenous peoples, Mexico likely would have destroyed them upon taking over from Spain. Instead, Mexico distributed some of the mission lands to natives, as was always intended by Spain, while letting the mission buildings decay. The missions have endured to this day to also be current Catholic places of worship as well as tourist sites. Due to the coronavirus crisis, none of the four missions were open nor were any adjoining museums or gift shops for browsing. We had the “Closed” signs all to ourselves.

On our return southward, we followed the road to east of Highway 101 and took a bike route path that led us into the Main Street of quaint San Quentin Village. The sparsely developed town has New England-style houses facing the open bay. The road though led us directly to the prison, which is a little ironic compared to how the indigenous peoples were forcibly housed in the mission. After backtracking, we found the bike lane over the Richardson Bay Bridge and our way across the Golden Gate Bridge through a ferocious crosswind back to the tranquil Presidio. We had set out to find missions and were, to quote a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “borne ceaselessly into the past.”