David Kier is a historian, cartographer, and expert on the Missions of Baja. As a young boy in the early ’60s, he began traveling to Baja with his parents. Wedged between his parents in their Jeep Wagoneer, a copy of Gerhard and Gulick’s Lower California Guide Book in hand, Kier provided turn-by-turn navigation. The experience burned the dirt roads and landmarks into his young mind and created a love of maps and Baja that has lasted a lifetime.

Kier published his first Baja guidebook as a high schooler in 1973, followed by an updated edition in 1974. The Old Missions of Baja & Alta California, 1697-1834, co-authored with Max Kurillo, was published in 2012. Kier wrote his detailed tome Baja California Land of Missions in 2016, now in its tenth printing. In 2020, Kier and Max Kurillo co-authored Old Missions of the Californias with updated information.

In this conversation, Kier takes us on a fun and energetic dive into the Missions’ rise and fall in Baja.

Visit David Kier’s website here.

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