SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

CONSTRUCTION OF THE SECOND COURTYARD

Archeology in this area was limited to uncovering the surviving walls of the structures. Little information was recovered about the sequence of construction or use of the rooms. Only some general observations can be made.

Gutiérrez concentrated the food storage, maintenance, transportation, and animal husbandry activities in the second courtyard on the east side of the friary. The construction crew built this as an extension of the lines of the friary retaining walls, approximately one hundred feet west to east and one hundred and ten feet north to south, divided into three levels by two terrace walls. The main body of the friary stood on its platform supported by a massive retaining wall between it and the second courtyard. The second courtyard sloped up to the base of the eastern friary retaining wall, but there was still a six-foot drop from the friary floor level to the upper area of the courtyard. The construction crew built the terraces within the courtyard to serve as steps from the entrance to the friary down to the main level of the second courtyard, sloping from six feet to eleven feet below the floor of the friary at the eastern half of the courtyard, along the stone sheds and barns.

The crews built the upper terrace of the second courtyard about 1 1/2 feet lower than the friary floor. The second terrace surface was another 2 1/2 feet lower. The upper slope of the lowest level of the eastern courtyard was two feet lower. The area around the buildings along the east side of the second courtyard was five feet lower than the second terrace and eleven feet below the friary floor.

Across the courtyard and along the west side of the second courtyard buildings, the crew built a drainage ditch of flagstone about one foot wide, one foot deep, and covered with flags. This diverted water runoff from the convento and church and the higher levels of the second courtyard, around the second courtyard buildings and out through the retaining wall along the east side of the second courtyard. East of this the ground dropped another three feet. [21]

Gutiérrez laid out the plan of the second courtyard so that the passageway from the friary to the second courtyard opened at the center of the west side of the first terrace. [22] The crew built a ramp or several steps down from the friary entrance to the terrace. A similar arrangement may have connected the first terrace with the second and the second terrace with the west side of the lowest courtyard level.

Reconstruction in the early nineteenth century altered and obscured the structures that once stood along the east side of the courtyard. By comparison with other missions, it is clear that these were storage sheds, hay-barns, stables and pens, but the remodelling of the early 1800s left few details of their plan unaltered. The excavations conducted here in the 1930s did not record enough information to allow the original structures to be recognized within the later remodeling. All that can be said is that a series of stone rooms about twenty feet wide and altogether perhaps eighty feet long stood along the east edge of the courtyard, against the easternmost retaining wall. Probably several wooden coops and sheds stood along the north and south walls of the courtyard.

In the area east of the campo santo extending south from the church, the crew built three other retaining walls. The westernmost extended south from the southeast corner of the friary, acting as the east edge of the campo santo. It was about four feet thick and extended south an undetermined distance. East of it two other walls, each 2 1/2 to three feet thick, stepped down the slope. At least one long building was built using these two walls as a foundation. It extended south from the second courtyard wall about sixty-five feet and was nineteen feet across on its exterior. This may have been the granary for the mission. Nineteenth century construction again obscured the original building, to the point that little more can be determined.