St. Teresa's Church

Ansel Adams made this church famous before Hollywood did. His 1953 photograph Church and Road set it on its hill above Bodega, and a decade later Alfred Hitchcock ran the schoolchildren of The Birds past it from the Potter schoolhouse next door. The redwood church had fallen into disrepair in the 1950s, and parishioners have kept it since. It still has no running water. The bronze carries one slip of its own, a full stop after 1861 in the middle of a sentence.

What the plaque says

Church of Saint Teresa of Avila Constructed of redwood in 1859 by New England ships' carpenters on Spanish land grant donated by Jasper O'Farrell. On March 8, 1860, Father Louis Rossi was appointed pastor. Archbishop Alemany dedicated the church in the town of Bodega on June 2, 1861. And it has served this coastal community continuously for over a century. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 820 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church and the Sonoma County Parks and Recreation Department, June 2, 1968.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goat Rock and the Russian River Mouth — 11 mi
  A headland blasted for a jetty that never kept the river open, at the mouth where harbor seals haul out.
• Tomales Point — 11 mi
  The northern tip of Point Reyes, where tule elk were fenced in for forty-six years and are fenced in no longer.
• Cypress Tree Tunnel and Coast Station KPH — 17 mi
  A radio company's driveway that grew into a tunnel, leading to the coast station that kept Morse code on the air.
• Kule Loklo — 23 mi
  A Coast Miwok village built in the 1970s to honour a people its builders were told had died out. They had not.

More markers nearby

• Bodega Bay and Harbor — 4.9 mi
• Cooper's Sawmill — 11 mi
• Walters Ranch Hop Kiln — 14 mi
• Cotati Downtown Plaza — 14 mi