Mission San Juan Arches

This is the second time I’ve done San Juan Bautista’s stunningly grand adobe Mission.   I’m doing some serious tree re-arranging here, but it’s pretty much just like this, only there are wild chickens running around everywhere, and it smells like roses.  The gardens are absolutely beautiful and the mission gives tours where they point out all the cat doors that are built into the adobe and other similarly entertaining architectural features.  San Juan Bautista has a mystery though that I’ve not found an answer for and apparently the San Juan Bautista Historical Society is in the dark about too.  

Underneath this literally-on-the-San-Andreas-Fault town are a network of old tunnels, spidering out from the mission to at least 10 of the major buildings.  These aren’t spindly little tunnels either, ‘cause I’ve seen the one that’s in the Art Gallery next to Jardines Restaurant, they go deep, they look scary, and you could march a small army through them in short order.  The problem is, no one seems to know who built them, where they all are, and why.  In larger cities, tunnels are very common, easily explainable— but this is San Juan Bautista, where in the 1880’s which would have been around the time the tunnels were built they had a population of 484.  The town has closed down a couple times in recent memory, due to lack of funds, and volunteers kept the water and sewage going for the remaining residents until things picked up again.  In the 1980’s the chief of police, whose name was ‘Graywolf’    went around in wild west garb , refusing to wear his uniform, and eventually fired himself for pulling a gun on someone in a saloon.  It’s that kind of town.   

So the construction of a tunnel project?   A dozen, large, bricked tunnels extending half a mile or more each, deep under the town radiating out of the mission?  No one has any idea.  Or at least, the historical society thinks that some people have ideas.  They’re having a meeting on Saturday June 9, at the very same saloon that the police chief had his little brawl at, (Dona Esther’s) to talk about the history of San Juan Bautista and maybe get some answers about the tunnels from the locals.   I can’t tell you how much I’d love to go to that meeting.  Maybe I can.  I don’t know.  I don’t have a cool wild west themed name.     

I’ll have to send Old Dead-Eye Ves.