San Antonio de Pala Asistencia – Uses of Local Stone
(Today known as Mission San Antonio de Pala)

The Mission Cemetery

Please note that the Mission San Antonio de Pala Mission church was restored over the years. Below is a photograph from the “San Antonio de Pala Asistencia Mission” web site that shows what the mission looked like in 1875. According to one of the signs in the Cemetery: “This is the original Mission cemetery. Here are buried the remains of hundreds of Native American converts to Catholicism as well as other early California pioneers.”

We visited the Pala Mission cemetery early on a spring day in May 2012. Our photographs of the mission cemetery begin at the back enrance near the parking lot, moved towards the Mission Bell Tower located at the front of the mission, and later that day back towards the back entrance again. (Scroll down this page to see the first set of photographs that we took of the an Antonio de Pala Mission Cemetery.)

There are a few granite cemetery stones in the cemetery, and I am trying to ascertain if any of the granite originated from the old Magee Granite Quarry. (The quarry is located on land that, according to court records, was purchased in 1942 by Robert MaGee, a member of the Pala Band. He purchased the parcel of land on which the granite quarry is located from the United States government.  Granite from the quarry was first produced about 1955 and quarrying continued intermittently until the 1980s by companies leased the quarry.  Today the quarry is inaccessible as the road to the granite quarry is via land owned by the Pala Band of Indians and a private owner.) Peggy B. & Pat Perazzo