An excellent blog post by my friend Richard Nisley. The Pacific Coast Highway is one of the world's best drives.
El Camino Real - Jun 26, 2021
One of the most famous roads in all the world is California Route One, a coastal highway that traverses the entire length of the state. A portion of this highway ls known as El Camino Real (The Royal Road), which begins in San Diego, runs 600 miles north, to the far side of the San Francisco Bay, where it concludes in the Sonoma Valley. It is, indeed, a royal road, strewn with 21 jewels that are the ancient remnants of a once thriving empire–Spain. These ancient remnants are, of course, the 21 California Missions. Many of them have lent their name to the suburbs, towns and cities that sprung up around them: San Diego de Alcalá, Santa Barbara, San Buenaventura (the city of Ventura), San Francisco de Asis, San Fernando Rey de España (suburban San Fernando Valley), San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (Carmel-By-The-Sea), San José de Guadalupe, San Juan Capistrano, San Gabriel Arcángel (suburban San Gabriel Valley), Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara de Asis (present day Santa Clara University).
The missions were built during a seventy-year period, from around the 1760s to the 1830s, and no two are alike. As with the plantations of the Old South, they were independent, self-contained units, that created, raised, planted, and cultivated everything they would need, and produced a cash crop–wine. They also created a unique architecture that has influenced California architecture ever since–the California Mission Style.
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