This statue, made of concrete from a clay model by Uno John Palo Kangas, was originally placed in 1936 in a prominent location in a public park across the street from the Ventura County Courthouse.

The statue, standing nine feet four inches (2.84 m) in height, shows Serra standing with his head facing to the left and wearing a Franciscan cassock with cowl, sandals, and a rope belt (or cincture), a rosary hanging from the belt, a book in his left hand, and a walking stick (or staff) in his right hand.

In 1935, Uno John Palo Kangas (1904–1957), a sculptor born in Finland and raised in Michigan, was commissioned by Ventura County and the Works Progress Administration to create a statue of Serra as part of the Federal Art Project.

[4] Kangas began by visiting the Santa Barbara and Ventura missions to study images of Serra and to learn about his life and style of dress.

[2]: 3  In August 1936, the Los Angeles Times published on its front page a large photograph of Kangas posing with the clay sculpture.

[2]: 6  Kangas gathered sand and gravel from the Ventura River,[3] which he used to make a concrete aggregate material that he poured on location into the mold.

[2]: 6 On November 27, 1936, Kangas's concrete sculpture[8] was unveiled in prominent location in a small public park across the street from the Ventura County Courthouse.

The unveiling ceremony was attended by Kangas, Governor Frank Merriam, Mayor George A. Newell Jr., and other notable persons.

[10] By the 1980s, the statue had deteriorated from years of exposure to Ventura's salt air and from the pooling of rainwater in the collar of the figure's robe, which formed a basin.

[11] The inauguration of this museum was delayed when its chief proponent, Bob Pfeiler, became ill.[12] In 1996, the concrete statue was discovered by a reporter for the Los Angeles Times in an industrial storage yard operated by Oilfield Service & Trucking Company (OST) along Ventura Avenue.

The City loaned an initial sum of $15,000 to begin the process to be repaid by local boosters who raised more than $100,000 through the sale of limited-edition 18-inch (46 cm) bronze replicas (hand-tooled by Charles Kubilos),[17][18] posters/lithographs,[19][20] and T-shirts, hats, and pins bearing the phrase "I Support the Serra Statue".

[16][2]: 28–39 [24][25] The carving began with large strips of basswood from linden trees in a Great Lakes forest that were glued together to form a 1,200-pound (540 kg) block.

[28] A group of the student artists visited the wood statue at the old livery building and made latex molds in multiple sections.

[3][31] The bronze cast stands on a concrete base with an outer layer of polished black granite from the Andes Mountains.

[2]: 59 The bronze cast replaced the original concrete statue in 1989 in the small park at the top of California Street overlooking downtown Ventura and the Pacific Ocean.

A plaque at the base of the statue states: "The citizens of the City of San Buenaventura gratefully recognize the extraordinary efforts of Councilman Russell Burns (1918–1994) and master carver Wilbur Rubottom (1914–1993) to replace the decaying concrete 1936 statue of Father Serra by John Palo-Kangas with this bronze copy dedicated on October 20, 1989.

[34] In January 1991, four glass jars of orange and blue paint were thrown at the bronze cast; the words "Spirit of Crazy Horse" and an image of a clenched fist were also spray-painted on the sidewalk at the base of the statue.

The author, Rellis Smith, wrote: "To have statues such as the one in front of Ventura City Hall is a direct slap in the face of all Chumash and other Native American cultures.

Objections to the public display of Serra statuary cite the mistreatment of the Native American people during the mission era.

[51] The attention and damage to the statues of Junípero Serra was renewed during the George Floyd protests, which expanded to include monuments of individuals associated with the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas.