MISSION SAN DIEGO DE ALCALÁ
Mission — San Diego, California
Status: Historic site · Access: Open to public
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/mission-san-diego-de-alcala-san-diego-california/

California’s first mission—1769, and the site of the first Christian burial.

A mission in San Diego, California, Mission San Diego de Alcalá is filed here for what the record attaches to it. California’s first mission—1769, and the site of the first Christian burial. It sits in the archive under missions, local folklore and haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.

Mission San Diego is the first mission — July 16, 1769, Serra's cross on Presidio Hill, the mother of the twenty-one-mission chain that colonized Alta California. The expedition that founded it had lost half its men to scurvy on the voyage; the San Jose never arrived at all. The mission was founded in a graveyard of its own making.
The Kumeyaay resisted — the mission moved inland in 1774 to be closer to the villages and water, and in November 1775 the Kumeyaay and neophytes attacked, burned the church, and killed Padre Jayme when he came out to calm them. He was California's first Christian martyr, buried in the sanctuary of the mission he died defending.
The present church is the rebuild — the 1813 construction, the 20th-century restoration after the ruin, the basilica that's still a parish on the site Jayme picked. The file keeps the first mission's hard beginning: the scurvy expedition, the martyr in the sanctuary, and the Mother of the Missions that survived its own founding violence.
Mission San Diego is the archive's first file — the 1769 mission that started the chain, the 1775 attack that made Jayme California's first martyr, and the rebuilt church that's still the mother of the missions.

WHY THIS FILE MATTERS
San Diego is the archive's origin file — the first mission, the first martyr, and the church that kept the chain's beginning through the ruin and the rebuild.
A mission that started the chain keeps its martyr — the file's suggestion being that San Diego's hold is Jayme's grave: the first missionary killed, the sanctuary he's buried in, and the mission that survived its burning to be the mother of them all.

FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified
· [Local folklore] apparition: Reported figures in the church and a presence in the campanario. Sacred ground in San Diego, California keeps its own kind of haunting — quieter, and harder to dismiss. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.
  source: Mission San Diego de Alcalá (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Diego_de_Alcal%C3%A1)

HISTORY — 1 documented facts
· [1769] Founded 1769; the first California mission. The site's documented religious history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'Mission San Diego de Alcalá'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest. The reports keep the address on the map.

SOURCES — 1 cited
· Mission San Diego de Alcalá — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Diego_de_Alcal%C3%A1

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HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not.
Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/