Historical Marker · No. 113
Site of Junípero Serra's Cross
Ventura, Ventura County · California
Erected by The Alice M. Bartlett Club, 1912
The bronze marks a cross that is no longer here. The Alice M. Bartlett Club's plaque records the wooden cross raised on September 9, 1912, and the city replaced that one in 1941; the first had been lost to weather and a second blew down in 1875. In 2003, facing a lawsuit over a religious symbol on city land, Ventura auctioned the cross and the acre under it to a private group now called the Serra Cross Conservancy. The Thomas Fire burned the park around it in December 2017. No state plaque stands here.
What the plaque says
San Buenaventura Mission Cross Restored September 9, 1912 by The Alice M. Bartlett Club of San Buenaventura, California, to take the place of the Mission Cross erected on this spot by the Franciscan missionary Padre Junipero Serra 1782
Where it stands
34.28462, -119.29617 · Directions
More markers nearby
- Ventura County Courthouse — 0.2 mi
- Mission San Buenaventura — 0.3 mi
- Old Mission Reservoir — 0.3 mi
- San Buenaventura Mission Aqueduct — 4.0 mi