Mission San Juan was a selfsustaining community of as many as 200 people, with fertile fields outside its walls where one quart of seed yielded six bushels of corn at harvest and a prosperous ranch 25 miles away that raised more than 3,500 sheep and 3,000 cattle. Inside the mission, workshops produced cured hides, cloth, wooden articles, and ironwares, while Franciscan brothers lived in sparse cells in the convento and cooked and ate in nearby rooms. In the early years, priests celebrated Mass in an open thatched-roof shed, then a stone church served San Juan from 1756 to 1786. In 1786, the present mission church was built over part of the foundation of an earlier granary as a temporary sanctuary. Indian homes of thatched-roof jacales were later replaced by apartments built into the outer wall as the mission grew. A 10-year effort to build a much grander third church and sacristy ended when dwindling numbers of Indian workers halted construction in the late 1780s, leaving half-finished walls. Since the mission era ended, later buildings have included priest's quarters built in 1968 from stones recycled from earlier mission walls and a post-colonial house built in 1856 atop old Spanish foundation.