Misión de Nuestro Padre San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores)

Misión San Francisco de Asís was founded in 1776 at the Ohlone village of Chutchui. California Indians began building its adobe church in the spring of 1782 under Padre Benito Cambón, at the direction of Padre Junípero Serra, and it was dedicated on August 2, 1791. The mission is popularly known as Mission Dolores, after a nearby stream, the Arroyo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores ("Creek of Our Lady of Sorrows"). The church is the oldest surviving building in San Francisco.

The missions established along El Camino Real in Alta California were intended to bring the region into the Spanish Empire by introducing Spanish law and government, founding colonies and towns, and bringing native peoples into the empire and the Roman Catholic faith. Mission Dolores deeply affected the Bay Area's Ohlone (Yelamu), Patwin, Miwok and Wappo peoples, and during the Spanish era about 1,000 native people lived at the mission at any one time. Today Mission Dolores is still an active Catholic parish.