Historians call San Rafael’s mission the most obliterated of California’s 21 missions.

Other missions decayed, collapsed, or were rebuilt. Some kept a wall, a doorway, a floor plan. San Rafael kept nothing. No original wall stands.

But it goes beyond that: no photograph of the original building is known to exist. By 1870 the adobe had dissolved into mud, and what was left was hauled off to clear the spot for a new church.

So when San Rafael rebuilt its mission in 1949, it ran into a problem: nobody knew what it looked like. There was one picture. In 1878, General Mariano Vallejo sketched the mission as he remembered it around 1831. Edward Vischer turned that sketch into a more refined drawing. One man’s half-century-old memory, rendered by another man’s hand: that is the only image of the original mission.

In 1880 the photographer Carleton Watkins hauled a mammoth-plate camera around the state and came home with pictures of nearly every mission in California, intact or in ruins. San Rafael had been cleared ten years earlier. It is the one he could not take.

Only one other mission was rebuilt from recollection rather than from a photo or a standing wall: Santa Cruz, whose church collapsed in the 1857 earthquake and whose half-size replica is based on a painting.

Vallejo is also the reason there was nothing left to draw.

When Mexico took the missions away from the Church in 1834, San Rafael was the first in the chain to go, and Vallejo was the official put in charge. He was supposed to distribute the land and livestock to the Native residents who had built the place. Instead he moved the cattle to his own holdings, put the former residents to work for him, and had the mission’s pear orchard and grapevines dug up and hauled north.

By 1840, 150 Native residents remained. By 1844, none. The adobe kept melting away.

One thing proved more durable than adobe: the bells that hung from a wooden frame.

In 1935 the brand-new Marin County Historical Society made recovering the lost bells its first project. One turned up at the Burdell ranch at Olompali, and two more were tracked down later. The originals are now inside the mission museum. Replicas hang out front, on a wooden frame, before a replica chapel, built from a drawing of a memory.

And the pears. The last orchard tree stood at Fifth and Lootens until a work crew took it out for a driveway in 1963, but a nurseryman had already grafted cuttings from it. One graft still fruits beside the Ross Historical Society library at the Marin Art and Garden Center, a living piece of the one California mission nobody can picture.

If you’d like to be considered for Photo of the Week (nature, architecture, wildlife), please fill this out!

A ranger leads a two-hour walk through Muir Woods at dusk, when the park is usually closed. The main batch of tickets is gone, but the final 5 spots are released this Wednesday 10/28 at 8am. Have your account and payment saved, since they go fast. Friday, October 30, 4:30pm, $1 reservation fee.

Because leaving Marin might take more planning. Look for our Marin events in the Wednesday email.

Stern Grove turns into a family Halloween fair with a haunted house, haunted maze, carnival rides, crafts, and live entertainment. 3-9pm, Friday, October 30, free entry.

Brooklyn DJ Illich Mujica spins techno and house in the Napa Music Hall’s 1800s upstairs ballroom, with costumes encouraged. 8pm-2am, Friday, October 30, $86.

Grab a kayak or paddleboard and float the Russian River estuary with local witches. Witch hats, striped socks, and capes encouraged. 9am-noon, Saturday, October 31.

Please note that this property isn’t associated with the banner sponsor above or Marin Buzz in any way. It is just a unique home you might be interested in seeing, for entertainment purposes only!

10 Canyon Ave, Bolinas, CA 94924

This 1936 house in Bolinas has a hand-carved door depicting whales and a whimsical turret. Does your house have a whimsical turret?

If not, you will be pleased to know the price has dropped $280k from the original asking price.

There’s an incredible deck with a hot tub view of Bolinas Bay and Stinson Beach. Two separate units totaling 2 beds, 2 baths, and 1,557 square feet on a 5,001-square-foot lot.

Sounds great to me, what do you think?

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Thanks for reading. We will be back with the regular events and activities email Wednesday morning!

— Allison + Brian