Car Repaired? Thank the Missions.

California history is always a living continual process.  Has your car been recently repaired, for example?  You have a Franciscan monk at an adobe mission almost 250 years ago to thank for that.  Once upon a time, the only highway was the Camino Real and the only stops along the way were the missions.  They fulfilled the social and commercial role of 7-11, gas stations, store, restaurant, hotel, church, and civic hall.  From the trek of Portola and Serra and the soldados and the mules, from San Diego to Monterey, in 1769, the needs of the road haven't changed much.

Although most originally pedestrian and equine, wheeled traffic steadily increased over the decades, from the slow ox-powered carretas on laundry day at the ranchos to the sleek fleets of beachside convertibles where it's always summer. 

Riding the King's Highway - dubiously mapped - if your horse needed a shoe or you broke a strap, you got it fixed at the nearest mission or asistencia.  Every mission coveted artisans, hiring and importing them from Mexico City or Peru.  And the blacksmith was an absolute necessity.  Anything in metal required, the blacksmith made it.  In the ever-growing pueblos of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego, several blacksmiths competed for a share of the traffic market.  Most blacksmiths also built a barn or stable of sorts -- the livery -- where wagons were built and stored, horses fed and maintained, horse tack made, and so forth.  But these were all services and goods that originated with California's earliest skilled workers: the blacksmiths.

Commercial blacksmith shops show up in the street views of Orange county towns and cities from the earliest photographed times.  They evolve - in almost every instance - into early garages and gas stations.  And historically, you can chart the flow of traffic by what's on the signs of these "pit stops".  Snacks and sodas.  Tires, fuel, water.  Whatever you need to get you back on the road and to your destination, right?  That's what the old mission trail was all about, too.  How about that?