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Mining Pecten Reef

Mining Pecten Reef

Robert Evans

The mural, Mining Pecten Reef by Robert Evans depicts the San Juan Capistrano Mission history in the late 1700s.

Soon after Father Junipero Serra dedicated Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, Franciscan missionaries began converting local Acjachemen to Christianity and bringing them to the mission to learn the European way of life. These converts-or neophytes, as they were called-tilled the soil, tended the crops, and helped construct mission walls and buildings.

The mission population increased steadily, and by the 1790’s, lime was constantly needed to make the plaster and mortar used to enlarge existing buildings and to construct new ones. One source of this mineral was the fossil limestone reefs of ancient seabeds. Native-American neophytes cut blocks of limestone from deposits like that found in Pecton Reef (an exposure of the middle to late Miocene Monterey Formation located in what became Laguna Hills) and took them to the mission to be heated in ovens until they were reduced to the valuable powder.

Category: Mural; Painting
Location: Laguna Hills

Medium type: Acrylic Paint; Canvas

Location

24035 El Toro Rd, Laguna Hills, CA, 92653

Contact information

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