On Easter Sunday, March 31, 1782, Father Junipero Serra founded Mission San Buenaventura, blessed land on the beach south of the present-day mission church, and planted a wooden cross. Mission San Buenaventura was the ninth California mission founded by Father Serra and his last. Shortly after the mission's founding, a large wooden cross was planted on a hill overlooking the mission church, where it served as a road sign for travelers seeking the mission. The original cross was eventually lost to the elements and replaced in the 1860s. After the second cross blew down in a storm on November 5, 1875, it was not replaced for almost 40 years. On Admissions Day, September 9, 1912, members of the ECO Club, a ladies service organization dedicated to bringing culture and a historical perspective to the frontier, erected a new wooden cross in the current location. The land did not become a city park until 1918, when Kenneth and Tonic Grant donated 107 hillside acres to the City of San Buenaventura. The first roads leading up to the cross were built around 1920. As part of festivities for the 150th anniversary mass on the site on March 31, 1932, a circular stone pedestal around the cross and a concrete pathway up to it were built, much of which remains today with minor adjustments. In 1941, the city replaced the 1912 cross with the one that stands today. In the spring of 2003, the wooden cross in Grant Park was threatened by a potential constitutional lawsuit claiming that the City of San Buenaventura's ownership and maintenance of a cross violated the principle of separation of church and state. On July 31, 2003, the City of San Buenaventura City Council voted to sell the cross and an acre of surrounding land to the highest bidder, and the park is now owned and maintained by the Serra Cross Conservancy, a local non-profit organization. In January 2010, stoneworkers from around the world came to Ventura for a ramparts project at Serra Cross Park, led by a family from Japan that had built castle ramparts and walls for eight generations; the project was constructed in 10 days using stone from a quarry in Ojai, and expert rock knockers from several states learned the Japanese method of dry stone walling, which uses no mortar and relies on gravity to hold stones in place for centuries. Much of Serra Cross Park was destroyed by the Thomas Fire on December 5, 2017, but the cross survived thanks to firefighters, and community volunteers helped re-landscape the park.