Mission San Fernando Rey de España

There was a village here called Achoicominga, and the mission went up on top of it on September 8, 1797. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, the coalition of lineages the mission drew from across four valleys, says plainly that its ancestors were enslaved here. Very little on the grounds is original. The Sylmar earthquake brought the church down in 1971 and the one standing now was finished in 1974. The convento came through — the largest adobe building in California, raised in stages between 1808 and 1822, and the only one the mission itself built.

What the plaque says

Founded in 1797 by Father Fermin Francisco Lasuen. We honor those men of faith, courage and vision who guided the founding of the mission and also those who have preserved it for posterity.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission San Fernando Rey de España — steps away
  The seventeenth Alta California mission, founded at the Tataviam village of Achoicominga, with the largest adobe building in the state standing beside it.
• The Cascades — 3.9 mi
  The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.
• Oak of the Golden Dream — 7.1 mi
  Gold was found in California here in 1842, six years before Sutter's Mill, and the oak it was found under is still standing.
• Pioneer Oil Refinery — 7.4 mi
  The first commercially successful refinery in the West, built in 1876 to take the crude coming down the pipeline from Pico Canyon.

More markers nearby

• Brand Park (Memory Garden) — steps away
• Rómulo Pico Adobe (Ranchito Rómulo) — 0.4 mi
• Griffith Ranch — 3.1 mi
• San Fernando Cemetery — 3.3 mi