310 Dolores Street
Castro (Eureka Valley) · San Francisco, CA 94114
The site was chosen for its harbor rather than its ground: the Mission was to be the nucleus of a seaport town guarding Spain's dominion here, on a peninsula with little tillable land and few Indigenous inhabitants within ten miles.
Site chronology
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22 Mar 1776
An expedition sent from Monterey selected the sites of the projected Mission and Presidio.
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27 Jun 1776
The founding party reached the site — seven married civilian settlers and seventeen married dragoons under Don José Moraga, with Friars Francisco Palou and Benito Cambon, ten days out from Monterey.
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8 Oct 1776
The Mission was dedicated. A procession of the whole male population walked from the Presidio bearing the banner of the cross and an image of St. Francis; Palou chanted a mass and preached on the founder of his order, and the soldiers and sailors fired salutes of musketry.
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1 Jun 1777
The first three converts were baptized, all on the same day.
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1808–1818
Earthquakes shattered the houses at the presidio (1808), threw down the church at San Juan Capistrano and injured the buildings at Purisima, Santa Inez, San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara (1812), and forced a new church at Santa Clara (1818). No damage here is recorded in any of the three.
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1835
Secularization. The friars were deprived of control of the Mission property and an administrator was appointed; cultivation was neglected, the Indians left, and there was soon nothing to divide.
Permit history
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Apr 2025
Revision to the 2024 ramp permit, correcting the scope and the path of travel.
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Jun 2024
New accessible ramp at the courtyard entrance; the expanded restroom building spans the property line onto the adjoining church and museum parcel.
Not yet documented: which structures on the parcel the assessor's and Planning's 1913 date describes — the adobe church recorded on this site in 1878 is older than that, and neither dataset resolves the difference; the building area, which the roll leaves at zero; and the architect and builder of the present church buildings. Know any of it? Tell us — just describe it in plain words.