Teachers may choose a guided tour conducted by a member of our costumed staff or a more in-depth, living history encounter featuring five or more staff members portraying residents of 17th century Mission San Luis.

During the course of Guided Tours students are conducted through each of the major reconstructed historic buildings at the Mission and the workplaces of the site’s tanner, blacksmith and potter. During the course of each tour, guides provide an overview of the development of the Mission, the lifestyles of its Spanish and Apalachee residents, the economic relationships this community had with other parts of the world, and its ultimate demise at the hands of invaders. Guided tours last approximately one hour.

Our two hour Living History Encounter Tour enables students to explore Mission San Luis as time travelers might. Students are divided into groups that explore Mission San Luis at their own pace and according to their own interests. As they move from place to place, students encounter costumed interpreters who play the roles of people who lived in 17th century San Luis.

In the Council House students may meet a Native American woman who stops making pottery long enough to explain the role of Indian women among her people. Under a small shelter near the Deputy Governor’s house, students have a chance to chat with a blacksmith who is making hinges for a house soon to be built. Whether in the Church or the Friary or in front of the smelly vats that contain hides the tanner is working on, students meet the people of Mission San Luis who are glad to stop what they are doing to converse with their young visitors. Your students will come away with a picture of a place unlike any they have ever been.