Mission San Fernando Rey de España, the seventeenth in the chain of outposts along Alta California’s El Camino Real, was established by Fray Fermin Francisco de Lasuen on September 8, 1797. A native of Vitoria, Spain, Lasuen served as Presidente of the California Missions for eighteen years and is buried at San Carlos Borromeo Mission, Carmel. The mission developed into a thriving industrial center supplying tallow and soap, hides and shoes, cloth and blankets, wine, olive oil, and iron work to other foundations. Its ranch encompassed 121,542 acres, and in 1806 the mission produced 12,868 bushels, mostly corn and wheat, while in 1819 its livestock, principally cattle, sheep, and horses, numbered 21,745. The convento, completed in 1822 after thirteen years of construction, featured a corridor with twenty-one Roman arches, four-foot adobe walls, and original iron grilles. The old mission church, the fourth mission church and an exact replica of the earlier edifice erected between 1804 and 1806, measures 166 by 35 feet, with walls seven feet thick at the base and five feet thick at the top, and contains interior furnishings used in the earlier church. Between 1797 and 1846, San Fernando recorded 3,188 baptisms, 2,449 burials, and 842 marriages. The cemetery is the final resting place for several thousand neophytes and early settlers attached to the only mission named for a King of Spain.
