This postcard view of the Garden of Mission Santa Barbara was published by the Edward H. Mitchell company of San Francisco about 1908, as a photomechanical lithograph. The Edward H. Mitchell company published postcards between about 1900 and 1928.
Founded in 1786, Mission Santa Barbara was the tenth of twenty-one Spanish Franciscan missions established in California between 1769 and 1823. The mission was built to convert American Indians of the Chumash tribe to Catholicism.
Today the mission serves as a parish church and includes a museum, a Franciscan friary, or monastery, and a retreat site.