California’s missions: 21 journeys

Attention, fourth-graders. If you want to make a model of a handsome, historic California building that was built for a simple purpose and produced entirely positive results, consider a lighthouse.

But if you want to explore how California came to look and behave the way it does, how civilizations collided, how farming was started here, how some of our biggest cities got their names and how we wound up with dozens of Native American reservations, the missions are a good place to start.

As many a Californian can tell you, there are 21 mission sites from San Diego to Sonoma, founded by Father Junípero Serra and succeeding Spanish friars between 1769 and 1823.