The old missions of Baja California are artifacts from the past. Of the twenty-seven missions, eight are intact stone-built churches from the 1700s. The others are in ruins, vanished, or replaced by modern churches in the 1900s.
In 2026, after a 10-year-run of printing new copies of my book, I am here going to share my collection of photographs, maps, site plans, and the chapter from my book for each mission. Some missions have or had ruins at multiple locations as nearly half of the missions relocated for better water sources or other reasons. Some mission albums will have these other sites on the same page and some will have separate albums for the other site.
Mission listed from north to south:
Mission El Descanso photo and info page
Mission Guadalupe del Norte photo and info page
Mission San Miguel photo and info page
Mission Santa Catalina photo and info page
Mission Santo Tomás (three sites) photo and info page
Mission San Vicente photo and info page
Mission San Pedro Mártir photo and info page
Mission Santo Domingo photo and info page
Mission El Rosario de Arriba photo and info page
Mission El Rosario de Abajo photo and info page
Mission San Fernando photo and info page
Mission Santa María photo and info page
Calamajué mission site photo and info page
Mission San Borja photo and info page
Mission Santa Gertrudis photo and info page
Mission San Ignacio photo and info page
Mission Guadalupe (del Sur) photo and info page
Mission Santa Rosalía de Mulegé photo and info page
Mission La Purísima photo and info page
Mission San José de Comondú (both sites) photo and info page
San Bruno, 1683-1685 fort & colony site
Mission Loreto photo and info page
Mission San Javier photo and info page
Mission Ligüí photo and info page
Mission Los Dolores (both sites) photo and info page
Mission San Luis Gonzaga photos and info page
Mission La Paz/ Todos Santos (three sites) photos and info page
Mission Santiago photo and info page
Mission Santa Rosa photo and info page
Mission San José de Cabo photo and info page
The “Lost Missions” of Baja California
See the Visitas (ruins of satellite mission visiting chapels)
See the mission road, El Camino Real on Google Earth and maps
The mission history is quite interesting and detailed. Several books attempted to tell the story of many or all the missions beginning with Zephyrin Engelhardt’s 1908 & 1929 editions of ‘The Missions & Missionaries of California, Vol. 1 Lower California‘. Travel adventure books and road-guide books gave some details on the missions. Other published mission history sources include: Peveril Meigs’ 1935 ‘The Dominican Frontier of Lower California‘; Peter Masten Dunne’s 1952 ‘Black Robes in Lower California‘; Albert Bertrand Nieser’s 1960 ‘The Dominican Mission Foundations in Baja California, 1769-1822‘; Marquis McDonald’s 1968 ‘Baja: Land of Lost Missions‘; Walt Wheelock’s 1971 ‘Byroads of Baja‘; Choral Pepper’s 1973 & 1975 editions of ‘Baja California: Vanished Missions, Lost Treasures, Strange Stories Tall & True‘; W. Michael Mathes’ 1977 ‘The Mission of Baja California‘; Tomás Robertson’s 1978 ‘Baja California and its Missions‘; Harry Crosby’s 1994 ‘Antigua California‘; Edward W. Vernon’s 2002 ‘Las Misiones Antiguas, The Spanish Missions of Baja California‘; Dave Werschkul’s 2003 ‘Saints and Demons in a Desert Wilderness’; Robert Jackson’s 2005 ‘The Missions and the Frontiers of Spanish America‘; David Burckhalter’s 2013 ‘Baja California Missions, In the Footsteps of the Padres‘; and David Kier’s 2016 ‘Baja California Land of Missions‘.