California Missions: The Earliest Series of Views Made in 1856

by Henry Miller

In 1856, as most of the California missions were falling into disrepair, Henry Miller travelled by muleback among them and made the drawings shown here.

Genres: History

68 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Henry Miller is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century British History at the University of Manchester.

Reviews

[Rindis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up mostly for the reproductions of a series of sketches of the California Missions. In 1856 they were already largely abandoned, and would soon decay into a ruined state (and by the text, this had already stared), but it's a great resource so show what they had been like.

These were all done by Henry Miller, who did them as part of his journal of a trip from San Francisco to San Diego. He had arrived in California in 1850 (from Germany, by way of New York), and started a butchery business, and ended up as a powerful cattle rancher, eventually controlling some 22,000 square miles of land.

At this point, his fortunes are not so grand, and he made his solitary way down the state with a single mule. According to Belleorphon Books' introduction, the text has been cut down (generally keeping just the part dealing with his travels), and there were previous editions of the sketches produced in very rare editions, so this is now the main accessible account of his journey.

The text itself is interesting, especially for someone that knows the names of places that would not grow up into large urban centers for quite a while yet. The illos are the main point though, and are great reference. It's not produced to be a big expensive volume, and is a great value for what it is.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was a child in Calif. every summer my family saw the missions. We saw a few each year until we had seen them all. The history behind them is wonderful.