History of Santa Barbara

Spanish period

A land expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà and accompanied by missionary Padre Junípero Serra visited in 1769, but did not stay. The first permanent European residents were Spanish missionaries and soldiers under Felipe de Neve, again accompanied by Serra, who came in 1782 to build the Presidio. They were sent both to fortify the region against expansion by other powers such as England and Russia, and to convert the natives to Christianity. Many of the Spaniards brought their families with them, and those formed the nucleus of the small town – at first just a cluster of adobes – that surrounded the Presidio. Padre Junípero Serra died August 28, 1784, over two years before the completion of the Mission. Mission Santa Barbara was dedicated December 4, 1786, the feast day of Saint Barbara. It was dedicated by Padre Fermín de Francisco Lasuén de Arasqueta, who succeeded Padre Serra as the second president and founder of the California Franciscan Mission Chain. The Mission fathers began the slow work of converting the native Chumash to Christianity, building a village for them on the Mission grounds. During the following decades, many of the natives died of diseases such as smallpox, against which they had no natural immunity.

The most dramatic event of the Spanish period was the powerful 1812 earthquake, and tsunami, with an estimated magnitude of 7.1, which destroyed the Mission as well as the rest of the town; water reached as high as present-day Anapamu street, and carried a ship half a mile up Refugio Canyon. Following the earthquake, the Mission fathers chose to rebuild in a grander manner, and it is this