Theo Sohmer

A good story gets to be a great one when it tells of someone who had no intention of getting involved in a project winds up being the driving force. Such is the case with Theo Sohmer.

Theo returned to his native California at the end of the Great War and decided he would press on with his career as a newspaper photographer – a job he wanted to do since his father taught him to use the family’s first camera.

Sohmer was 23 years old in 1920 and he had already traveled half-way around the world to fight a war in Europe, so when his editor asked him to travel the entire length of the El Camino Real – some 700 miles – it seemed like easy work.

Sohmer’s assignment was to photograph all the Spanish missions, from San Diego de Alcalá in the south to San Francisco de Solano, just north of the Golden Gate in Sonoma County.

Like many projects, the first days on the job were fun but tedious. Theo arrived at the missions mostly unannounced, so he spent untold hours explaining his task and soliciting permission from the priests to take pictures.

The trip took nearly two months. He took over five thousand photographs and managed to endear himself to Bishop John Joseph Cantwell of Los Angeles, which turned out to be both a good thing and a bad thing.

A good thing because the bishop encouraged Theo to forge ahead using his pictures to create a photographic history of the missions that was later adopted by church authorities and made him a rich man.  And a bad thing because Bishop Cantwell persuaded Theo Sohmer into being the Official Church Photographer for the Los Angeles Diocese.  An un-paid job he held until his retirement at age 70 in 1966.

Theo Sohmer’s work on postcards is legendary. His logo (his name inscribed on an artist’s palette) appears on thousands of cards published by the Western Publishing & Novelty Company of Los Angeles. The cards cover several western states and parts of Mexico and Canada.

The San Gabriel Mission on the card above was founded in 1771 and is 56 miles north of its more famous neighbor, San Juan Capistrano in Orange County.  The Archangel Gabriel, one of the three archangels mentioned in the Bible, is the mission’s guardian angel and the village’s namesake.

Today the mission functions as a modern Catholic Church with both an elementary and high school. It is located on South Mission Drive in the town of San Gabriel – less than five miles from Theo Sohmer’s boyhood home.

Other missions included in Theo Sohmer’s Photographic History are the 21 missions that currently comprise California’s Historic Mission Trail. Each is located on or near Highway 101, which roughly traces El Camino Real (The Royal Road) named in honor of the Spanish monarchy which financed the expeditions into California in the quest for empire.

From San Diego to Los Angeles, the historic highway is now known as Interstate 5. From Santa Clara to San Francisco, the road is called State Highway 82. North of San Francisco, Highway 101 again picks up the trail to the mission at San Rafael. From there, State Highway 37 leads to the last mission at Sonoma.