The usually sleepy streets of San Juan Bautista, site of the fifteenth Spanish mission along the El Camino Real, buzzed with the arrival of major Hollywood star power this past February: Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn filmed scenes from a yet-unnamed Paul Thomas Anderson film in the plaza in front of the 1797 Mission. As a Hollister local who’s spent ample time in the neighboring San Juan, attending almost every Sunday at mass at the Mission as a child, staring at the statues of realistically-painted saints tucked into their red draped alcoves behind the altar, checking out antique stores with my mom, and eating too much guacamole at the local Mexican restaurant Jardines, I’ve always loved our historic site. I also carry a certain amount of local pride that the Mission was integral to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in 1957, even though the bell tower in those famous scenes was actually nonexistent at the time, due to its removal in 1949 from dry rot and storm damage. Special effects were used instead, and the new tower that stands today was completed in 1976. Perhaps a little disappointing, but it still made us a bit famous.
When my family and I arrived in San Juan this February, we immediately noticed that it was more crowded than usual, something that usually happens only for the annual springtime Arts and Crafts Festival. A short walk to the San Juan Bautista Plaza–the oldest surviving Spanish plaza in California–showed us why. A film crew of at least twenty was bustling about, moving cords, sound equipment, and polishing a newly constructed dance floor under banners of flags on the plaza. Small groups of locals were clustered around, soaking in the action. I think it’s fair to say it was some of the biggest excitement that’s happened in San Juan since Hitchcock filmed there–and I guess we’ll see if today’s bell tower makes an appearance in the new movie.
The crew soon moved onto their next location, which is a fitting nod to how San Juan was formed. El Camino Real famously connects the twenty-one missions, and in addition to the religious draw, San Juan was a stopover for stagecoach activity, with eleven stagecoaches leaving per day. According to the travel website Trips into History, San Juan had routes where one might stopover from their trip from San Jose or Sacramento and transfer on a coach further on to Tres Pinos, Salinas, or Monterey. The stables sit on the south side of the plaza and today house a museum of wagons and stagecoaches. (Family legend has it that a distant cousin donated a stagecoach to the museum, but alas, I have no idea which one it could possibly be–I like to imagine it’s the bright red Studebaker with matching red wheels). There’s even a well-preserved tiny room where the stableboy would have lived and slept, relatively near the horses. Due to its small size and dark interior, it struck me as more of a prison than a home, and my daughter was quick to spy the chamber pot. Unfortunately for San Juan, Hollister was chosen by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 as the train stop; the stagecoaches of San Juan ultimately ceased, decreasing traffic into the town.
One such traveler to San Juan was J. Ross Browne. According to editor Arthur Lites in his introduction to Browne’s A Dangerous Journey, he was born in 1821 in Ireland and ultimately sailed to Kentucky in 1833. In 1844, he took a job as a secretary to Robert J. Walker, Secretary of the United States Treasury. Gold fever swept the world in 1849 and Browne persuaded Walker to make him “Agent in the Revenue Service on the Pacific Coast.” Upon arrival, he discovered that his new job was “Inspector of Postal Service” and was to establish post offices throughout–or as he put it, “charged with a commission to establish a line of post-offices on the land-route to Los Angeles, and enter into contracts for the carrying of the mails” (9). His adventures were turned into A Dangerous Journey, first published as two articles in Harper’s Monthly in 1862. (Incidentally, the only post office he actually founded was in San Jose). He was also the official recording secretary of the California Constitutional Convention in 1849.
Browne opens his narrative discussing his purchase of a “fine-looking mule recently from the Colorado” (10) and sets off on his journey to San Jose.
The road through the valleys of Santa Clara and San Jose was perfectly enchanting, winding through oak groves, and fields of wild oats and flowers; and nothing could exceed the balminess of the air. Indeed the whole country seemed to me more like a succession of beautiful parks, in which each turn of the road might bring in view some elegant mansion, with sweeping lawns in front, and graceful ladies mounted on palfreys, than a rude and uncivilized part of the world hitherto almost unknown. I met crowds of travelers all along the road, singing and shouting in sheer exuberance of spirit; and not unfrequently had some very pleasant and congenial company, bound either to the mines or in search of vacant government land for the location of claims. (11)
Today, his route would largely be sections of the El Camino Real. No oak groves or fields of wild oats and flowers, but an endless string of stoplights, office buildings, and Starbucks in strip malls. Browne would be shocked by the transformation.
After spending the night in San Jose, Browne continues his journey forty-five miles south to San Juan Bautista, taking what is now part of Highway 101. Today, the city of San Jose stops and open space reemerges as you drive south toward Morgan Hill, which Browne would have found more familiar. As Emerson Little explains for the Fullerton Observer, bell markers next to the highway commemorate the journey that the early missionaries took. There’s even one near the Cochrane Road exit, where I used to stop with my mom at what used to be Marie Callender’s after we did some serious shopping at Mervyn’s (now a Hobby Lobby). Browne would have arrived in San Juan (without discounts, pie, or cornbread) on a piece of the original King’s Highway adjacent to the Mission. He noted in 1849 that
[The Mission] was now in a state of decay. The vineyards were but partially cultivated, and the secos, or ditches for the irrigation of the land, were entirely dry. I got some very good pears from the old Spaniard in charge of the mission–a rare luxury after a long sea-voyage. The only tavern in the place was the “United States,” kept by an American and his wife in an old adobe house, originally part of the missionary establishment. (12)
Unfortunately for the Mission, as noted by the California Missions Foundation, it sits approximately 100 feet from the San Andreas Fault–you can actually see the rift from the side of the church from a small observation deck. (When I was a child, there was even a seismograph out front–groups of schoolchildren would always gather around it, waiting for the needle to catch the next Big One). In 1803, an earthquake destroyed the Mission; it was rebuilt by 1812. In Browne’s time, however, the pear trees were still thriving. A forty-acre plot behind the Mission brimmed with them, and according to the Moraga Historical Society, their seedlings are the oldest fruit trees in California.
Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the “old tavern” Browne mentions is the Castro/Breen Adobe, and the American and his wife were Patrick and Margaret Breen, survivors of the infamous Donner Party of 1846. (The official Plaza Hotel didn’t open until 1859, and it seems Leonardo filmed there, as I noticed a new prop sign in front of the hotel and stable). The San Juan Bautista Historic Walking Trail website explains that before the Plaza Hotel, visitors would stay at the Castro/Breen Adobe and visit with the hosts. Browne quickly realized who they were and became uncomfortable with his situation. In a chapter called “The Cannibal,” Browne notes that Patrick Breen “did not state–what I already knew from the published narrative of their adventures–that the woman had subsisted for some time on the dead body of a child belonging to one of the party” (13). Browne tried to be empathetic, as “her sufferings had been intense; that was evident from her marked and weather-beaten features” (13). When he eats dinner with them, however, he struggles eating a plate of meat: “I was hungry, and tried to eat it. Every morsel seemed to stick in my throat. I could not feel quite sure that it was what it seemed to be. . . . The taint of an imaginary corruption was upon it” (13). He spent the night as an anxious and disgruntled guest, recalling that “The room allotted to me for the night was roughly furnished, as might be reasonably expected; but, apart from this, the bedding was filthy . . . Whether owing to the vermin, or an unfounded suspicion that [the hostess] might become hungry during the night, I slept but little” (14). He dreamt of cannibalism and eagerly left first thing in the morning.
Today, like the rest of the Plaza, the Castro/Breen Adobe is part of the San Juan Bautista State Park and is open to the public for self-guided tours so we can all explore what life was like among the Jose Castro, the Breen family, and Amah Mutsun Native Americans (San Juan Bautista Costanoan). After paying a small fee and walking past a shelf of books for sale on the history of San Juan and the Donner Party, visitors see Isabella Breen’s wedding dress on display. She survived that infamous winter as a toddler, and the dress is remarkably well-preserved. After looking at a small collection of spittoons, a set of dentures, and some stockings, you can go outside and visit the outdoor kitchen. The outdoor location helped protect the main house from fire, and this one includes a grist mill, which still looks like it’s ready for use. Smaller rooms adjacent to the outdoor kitchen are filled with displays where you learn about San Juan’s past–including a charming feature by John Breen’s daughter, Adelaide, about San Juan, penned while she was in grammar school. She notes the pear orchards–and perhaps a few too many saloons:
San Juan is not a very large town, still I will endeavor to write a description of it. It is surrounded by hills. There are two hotels, four stables, two halls, five or six stores, one tinshop, one fruit store, five saloons, two butcher shops, one post office, on express office, one milliner shop, one drugstore, three restaurants, one private school, and one public school, two shoemaker shops, three Chinese washhouses, one pear orchard, one physician, two burying grounds, and three churches. The convent is a fine building situated on one side of the town. There are also several other fine buildings, but none so worthy of mention as the Convent. (Breen)
Today, San Juan is still not a very large town and lacks a tinshop and stables, but still hosts a variety of bars alongside some antique stores, hat shops, restaurants, and of course, the Mission Plaza sites.
From San Juan, Browne traveled what was then called Old Stage Road, connecting San Juan and Salinas. Today, as an informative road blog chronicles, it’s called the San Juan Grade, a former part of Highway 101. Browne’s perspective feels familiar to me, as my mom and I used to take the grade as the scenic route to visit our friends in Salinas.
The view from the summit was magnificent. Beyond a range of sand-hills toward the right stretched the great Pacific. Ridges of mountains, singularly varied in outline, swept down in front into the broad valley of the Salinas. The pine forests of Monterey and Santa Cruz were dimly perceptible in the distance; and to the left was a wilderness of rugged cliffs, as far as the eye could reach, weird and desolate as a Cape Horn sea suddenly petrified in the midst of a storm. Descending through a series of beautiful little valleys clothed in a golden drapery of wild oats, and charmingly diversified with groves of oak and sycamore, and rich shrubbery of ceonosa [sic], hazel, and wild grape, I at length entered the great valley of the Salinas, nine miles from the Mission of San Juan. (15)
The grade still follows a similar path and hasn’t changed all that much. You probably will only pass one or two cars and perhaps a group of bicyclists; when I was little, my mom and I would pretend to be on the lookout for stagecoaches and bandits. I like to think that I still might find a bandit or two coming around a bend, tucked behind a large granite rock or oak tree, and perhaps with the same wild oats Browne noticed getting stuck in the bandit’s clothes.
Editor Arthur Lites writes that Browne carried on his dangerous journey through Salinas, Soledad, and San Miguel, finally making it to San Luis Obispo. He was a busy traveler in a time when travel was certainly challenging, moving his family to Italy in 1851, returning to California in 1855 as Custom-House Inspector and Inspector of Indian Affairs. He even served as United States Minister to China from 1868-69. He died suddenly in 1875 in Oakland from appendicitis. Although today Browne is not well-known, during his life, his writing on foreign travel and Western adventure were popular, featuring frequently in Harper’s Monthly.
Who knows what Browne would think of Hollywood descending on San Juan, but he probably would be more comfortable dining there today at Jardines and spending the night at Posada de San Juan with vegetarian options, a nice clean bed, and no chance of cannibalism.
Sources
Breen, Adelaide. “A Girl and the Orchard.” Nov. 1871. Castro-Breen Adobe, San Juan Bautista, 17 Feb. 2024.
Browne, J. Ross. A Dangerous Journey: California 1849, edited by Arthur Lites, Arthur Lites Press, Palo Alto, California, 1950.
“Castro/Breen Adobe.” Rozas House Org. 2018. https://historicwalkingtrail.com/location/castro-breen-adobe/. Accessed 18 March 2024.
“Former US Route 101 on the San Juan Grade and through San Juan Bautista.” 19 Oct. 2017. http://www.gribblenation.org/2017/10/old-us-101-san-juan-grade.html. Accessed 18 March 2024.
“The History of Pears in California.” Moraga Historical Society. https://moragahistory.org/moraga-history/pears-in-california/. Accessed 17 March 2024.
“Jardines Restaurant.” http://www.jardinesrestaurant.com. Accessed 18 March 2024.
“The Last Days of the California Stagecoach.” Trips Into History. 20 Oct. 2013. https://tripsintohistory.com/2013/10/20/the-last-days-of-the-california-stagecoach/. Accessed 18 March 2024.
Little, Emerson. “Local El Camino Real Bells Tell California History.” 24 Jan. 2021. https://fullertonobserver.com/2021/01/24/local-el-camino-real-bells-tell-california-history/#:~:text=It%20was%20to%20be%20a,Association%20in%20the%20early%201900s. Accessed 19 March 2024.
“Mission San Juan Bautista, California.” The Hitchcock Zone. https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Mission_San_Juan_Bautista,_California. Accessed 18 March 2024.
“Posada de San Juan.” https://www.posadadesanjuanbautista.com. Accessed 18 March 2024.
“San Juan Bautista.” California Missions Foundation. https://californiamissionsfoundation.org/mission-san-juan-bautista/. Accessed 18 March 2024.
“Castro/Breen Adobe” courtesy Annette Elrod
