California Mission Visitor's Guide
Description
The Spanish mission system laid the groundwork for California, and left behind a rich linguistic, cultural, and economic heritage. The missions grew into settlements, which in turn grew into many of California's most important cities and towns. It's impossible to understand California today without learning about the missions.
The California Mission Guide website feature visitor information for each of the twenty-one missions, as well as the five presidios (military outposts) and numerous sub-missions, or assistencias. In addition, the site features maps, historical background, and information on related topics, such as the making of adobe bricks, and Russian settlements in California.
There is also an inexpensive California Mission Guide companion book available at Amazon.com.
Educational Features
The California Missions are part of the standard curriculum in the California public school system, so many of the visitors to the site are students and teachers. To support education about the missions, the site has added a number of features:
- Fun Facts, or mission trivia
- Animated mission map, which displays the missions in the order in which they were built
- Activities for students, including a "word finder" game and a mission vocabulary list
