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, waspublished in 2012. Kier wrote his detailed tome Baja California Land of Missions in2016, 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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