Ventura, CA Photo - Fountain at Mission San Buenaventura, Ventura, California

Mission San Buenaventura is a Spanish mission founded by the Franciscan order in present-day Ventura, California. Founded on March 31, 1782, it was the ninth Spanish mission established in California, and the last to be established by Father Junà ƒÃ‚ ­pero Serra. Named for Saint Bonaventure, the mission is the namesake of the city of Ventura (officially "San Buenaventura") and Ventura County. Mission San Buenaventura was planned to be founded in the year 1770, but the founding was delayed because of the low availability of the military escorts needed to establish the mission. In 1793, the first church burned down. Today, only a small section of the entire mission still stands; the Cemetery to the left of the church is covered by a school. It took the neophytes 16 years to build the new church, which still stands today and functions as a parish church of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: The Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.