Warm ochre walls glow against a perfect California sky in this luminous linen-era card of Mission San Diego de Alcalá — the "Mother of All California Missions," founded July 16, 1769 by Fray Junípero Serra on El Camino Real, its iconic campanario bell tower rising in pale cream stucco against feathery palms and deep-green trees, the weathered façade bearing the beautiful asymmetry of centuries of earthquake, restoration, and re-restoration. Published by the Herz Post Cards company of San Diego with a "Made in USA" cactus vignette on the reverse, this is a prime example of the linen-era California mission postcard trade that flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, when tourists motoring the newly paved El Camino Real made mission-visiting a quintessential California ritual. The card is unused and in bright, clean condition — a handsome specimen of mid-century California regionalism.