Title: How Did the California Missions End? | The California Frontier Project
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Content: So the period of mission founding lasted 54 years in total. But the missions continued on until the Mexican government began the process of secularization in 1834. This means that the missions lasted for a total of about 65 years. What was secularization? Under Spanish rule, the government expected that the missions would last for a period of 10 years. The idea was that during those 10 years the Indian people living at the mission would learn how to live according to the lifestyle of a Latin American pueblo or town. After that time, the missionaries would move away and that the land of the missions would be converted into small farms that would be owned by individual Indian families. The mission church would become a parish church, with a “secular” priest (one who didn’t belong to a special order like the Franciscans), as in most Latin American and Spanish towns. This process was called “secularization”, because in Latin the word “secular” refers to a common ordinary life in the world. The mission communities were therefore to become common, ordinary towns.