Improvements OK'd for San Luis Rey Mission's lavandería
Visitors to Oceanside's Mission San Luis Rey soon will get a better glimpse of what daily life was like there more than 200 years ago.
The city granted the mission a permit this week to restore its historic lavandería, also known as the “sunken gardens.” In pioneer days, water from the nearby San Luis Rey River was diverted to the low-lying area for bathing, a laundry and irrigating downstream crops.
Remnants of the tile stairway, water channels, stone pools, and carved gargoyles remain in front of the mission along Mission Avenue, but the site is overgrown and has deteriorated from neglect.
“This is a project we've had on our radar for about 20 years,” mission Executive Director Gwyn Grimes said at Wednesday's Oceanside City Council meeting.
The restoration will include new fencing, walking paths, benches, interpretive signs, and a garden with plants used by native Americans for medicine, food and other purposes.
“The lavandería is an integral feature of the mission's landscape and an invaluable interpretive resource for providing information of daily living at the mission,” according to a city staff report.
The plan is proceeding now because of the recent completion of the mission's Hacienda, a retirement community of 213 apartments with independent living, assisted living and memory care facilities. It opened last year at the southern end of the mission grounds.
“This is literally the front door of their community,” Grimes said, and the restored pathways and gardens will provide residents and visitors with a place for recreation and education.
Designated as an archaeological site in 1955, the lavandería is open to the public and is part of the mission's walking tour. Elementary school classes visit annually as part of their history lessons.
Founded June 12, 1798, the Mission San Luis Rey became home to 3,000 of the region's native Luiseño people over the next 30 years. At the time, the mission controlled about 950,000 acres. The Luiseños, converted to Catholicism, tended 50,000 head of livestock and grew grapes, olives, oranges, corn and other crops.
San Luis Rey was the 18th of the 21 California missions to be built. The church there is the third one built on the site, completed at the height of the mission's prosperity in 1815.