Tour of the historic Santa Inés Mission mills

Join us for a tour of this historic site in Solvang, with reception to follow at the Elverhoj Museum of History and Art.

The Harvard Club of Santa Barbara has arranged a guided tour of the historic Santa Inés Mission Mills complex in Solvang at 2 p.m. on Saturday, September 27. Our host at the Mills will be Dr. Jarrell Jackman, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, which manages the Mission Mills on behalf of California State Parks. The beautiful 39 acres of land, adjacent to Mission Santa Inés, is part of the Mission Santa Inés National Historic Landmark District and includes historic grist and fulling mills and their reservoirs. The State of California purchased the complex from the Trust in order to create a new State Park. It will be the first to interpret the industrial dimension of the history of the California Missions. For more information about the Trust and the Mission Mills project visit http://www.sbthp.org.

Participants will gather at 2 p.m. near the intersection of Highway 246 and Old Mill Road. Detailed directions and parking instructions will be emailed to participants a few days before the event. The tour will take roughly two hours and will require about a mile of easy walking. At 4 p.m. we will drive to the nearby Elverhoj Museum of History and Art for refreshments and a tour of the museum’s displays interpreting the Mission Mills.

To facilitate carpooling to this event, we have created a new forum category (“Carpooling”) on this website.  If you wish to carpool (desiring a ride or offering a ride), please post a notice at the forum: https://hcsantabarbara.clubs.harvard.edu/forum.html.

There will be no cost to participants but the tour will be limited to 30 participants on a first-come, first-served basis, so please RSVP soon. Priority will be given to Harvard Club of Santa Barbara members and Harvard alumni living in the Santa Ynez Valley. Participants may bring a guest. We look forward to seeing you at this event!

View photos from the event here!