Context
Some thirty miles west of King City is the pristine San Antonio Valley. Steinbeck knew this remote valley because in 1918 he recovered from the Spanish flu at a friend’s ranch, the dry air of the valley recommended by his doctor. The valley is also home to one of California’s most remote missions, Mission San Antonio.
In the summer of 1771, Spanish missionaries traveling from Baja to Alta California founded a mission in the San Antonio Valley, the third constructed in California. According to Junipero Serra’s former student, closest friend and first biographer, Francisco Palóu, Father Serra hung a bell from an oak tree marking the new mission site and rang it resoundingly, crying out, “Come, gentiles [native peoples], come to the Holy Church and receive the faith of Jesus Christ.” Serra wanted the bell to be heard throughout the world—as Palou reported—and was “almost beside himself” with excitement at the location of the mission. (Beebe and Senkewitz 225-6] An elaborate irrigation system helped make this mission one of the most productive in the California mission system.
Steinbeck’s first California novel, To a God Unknown, is set in this valley. Hero Joseph Wayne swaggers into Valley of Our Lady—San Antonio Valley--with outsized visions of settlement on his mind. Taking advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, he claims his 160 acres and then invites his three brothers to join him in the west. Soon he welcomes his recently deceased father’s spirit, which occupies a tremendous oak tree, under which Joseph builds his home—against the advice of a Mexican resident. Joseph’s outsized visions of a vast family homestead withers in a California drought. Steinbeck’s ambitious novel weaves together Native American, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo histories of the region; land use—raising cattle; and weather patterns.
The region remains much as it was when Steinbeck spent time there; William Randolph Hearst owned the land in the 20th century, building a hunting lodge near the crumbling mission. The land was then sold to the U.S. military, and training exercises are held on valley slopes. Today, the mission is restored (and raising funds for earthquake reinforcement), and visitors can stay at what was once Hearst’s lodge. In the spring, lupin and poppies carpet the meadows.