STRUCTURES : Mission Stands the Test of Time : Founded in 1782, the San Buenaventura edifice represents the beginning of Ventura as we now know it.

From Grant Park, above Old Town Ventura, the panoramic view tells the history of the region. Almost.

The freeway--tracing the coastline thoroughfare designated El Camino Real by the Spanish more than 200 years ago--snakes its way alongside the city and provides a constant hum that rises up to the park. You can see the newly restored pier dipping its wooden finger into the Pacific.

A bird’s-eye view offers a picture of development over the past century. The old City Hall wears its weathered green patina proudly. Countless red-tile roofs dot the landscape alongside Victorians, Craftsmans and pockets of ranch house suburban sprawl.

Only one thing is wrong with the picture.

From the Serra cross in Grant Park, erected in honor of Father Junipero Serra, you can’t quite see the mission for the trees. And it is Mission San Buenaventura, founded in 1782, that, more than any other existing structure in the region, represents the beginning of Ventura as we know it.

Like many of the 21 missions established in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the mission here became a hub of European influence around which a California municipality grew.

A little attention paid to this monumentally important structure on Main Street--one that we no doubt take for granted--is attention well-rewarded. There, crowning the section of Main Street, which has become thrift-shop row, is a piece of living history.

Besides its status as a conspicuous historical landmark that carries the legacy of early California, it is also the most continuously functional structure in the area.

On a recent Sunday, Msgr. Patrick J. O’Brien led the Mass in the chapel, part of a continuum 200 years old and counting. A full congregation sat, stood and knelt under rustic roof beams and 14 paintings of the Stations of the Cross, dating back to 1809, when the current chapel was completed. The first church burned.

Of course, some see in the California mission system a more sinister subplot. The creation of the mission here could also represent the beginning of the end for an indigenous culture, as the Franciscans came to indoctrinate the Chumash in the ways of the Catholic faith.

As any local historian knows, Mission San Buenaventura is significant in the chain because it was the last established by Serra before he died. As a pamphlet in the gift store notes, it was also the only mission founded during Holy Week.

Originally, it was planned as the third of the missions built, after those in San Diego and Monterey, but a series of delays resulted in its being the ninth. The Santa Barbara Mission--dubbed the Queen of the Missions--was established four years after the one in Ventura.

If Ventura’s mission is a more stylistically restrained, modest structure than Santa Barbara’s, it still boasts a sturdy persona and logic. Built by Chumash converts from tile, stone and adobe, with walls that are 6 1/2 feet thick and with a tower visible for miles, the mission fulfills its purpose as the spiritual and physical center of the area.

Foursquare as it is, there are decorative flourishes throughout, including the arched side door. Its Moorish design was interpreted by the Chumash as a map of the mission’s territory, flanked by two rivers and crowned by the hills.

The mission hasn’t been without some turmoil through the centuries, beginning with the earthquake of 1812, which brought down a number of missions. But the San Buenaventura structure survived and, in the next year, was repaired with heavy buttressing. A tidal wave in early 1813, which swept up toward the mission, caused the inhabitants to move out temporarily.

There were other human-generated problems to contend with in the 19th Century, including secularization of the mission in 1836.

A misguided pursuit of style intervened in the 1890s, when the resident priest embarked on a series of ruinous home improvements. At the time, Ventura was undergoing massive growth resulting from the arrival of the railroad, and Father Rubio sought to reflect that delirious spirit of change and modernization.

Windows were elongated to allow for stained-glass panes, the original ceilings and floors were covered over, and the Chumash decorative details were replaced with contemporary ones. It wasn’t until 1957 that an extensive restoration project brought the mission back to its archetypal state.

From the cloistered mission courtyard, with its vegetation and pathways radiating around a central fountain, a visitor can indulge in innocent time travel. Peering over the fence, through the looming pine star trees that are lighted ceremoniously at Christmas, you can see the landmark Pierano Grocery. But even this Old Town landmark is younger, by 100 years, than the mission.

Time is relative, especially in Southern California, a present tense-minded region where architecture and culture of even 100 years ago seem to qualify as the stuff of ancient history. By European or even eastern United States standards, the missions are young.

But for a Californian, to check in with the missions can be a reassuring process that goes beyond questions of religious ideology and socio-historical meaning. Josef Woodard is an avowed cultural omnivore who covers art, architecture and music.