Our Lady of Watsonville: the Virgin of Guadalupe in the Pinto Lake oak

Watsonville sits in Santa Cruz County, California. Anita Mendoza Contreras worked in its canneries. She was a mother, and a prominent leader in the Watsonville Canning strike of 1985 to 1987. Writers have since linked her vision to those years as a wildcat labor organizer, and to the hard aftermath of the strike.

Wednesday, 17 June 1992. Contreras came to the north shore of Pinto Lake alone, and troubled. Some accounts say she was brooding over marital problems. Others say she was praying for a child who had drowned.

A woman appeared to her, dressed as a humble farmworker. "Una campesina." The woman spoke. She told Contreras to pray the rosary for peace in the world. The spot by the lake, she said, would now be a sanctuary. Ryan Masters later rendered her final words this way: "Now close thine eyes, my child."

Contreras closed her eyes. When she opened them, the woman was gone. On a nearby oak, an image had been imprinted in the bark. It looked much like the Virgin of Guadalupe as she is shown in Mexican folk art. Years later, in 1999, Contreras told a Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter: "I know what my eyes saw and my ears heard."

On 22 July 1992, Laramie Trevino of the Register-Pajaronian reported "More images seen in trees." Six days later, Trevino's headline read "Thousands visit 'blessed oak'." Pilgrims came from as far as Oregon and Mexico. Some shone sunlight onto the image with mirrors as they prayed. Contreras herself often prayed there barefoot. To her, it was sacred ground.

No formal Catholic Church ruling has been found. Priests still said Mass at the site. In 1996, Rev. Greg Sandman called apparitions of the Virgin "signals of how God wants to protect us." On the sixth anniversary, Father Roman Bunda put it simply: "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary… For those who don't believe, no explanation is possible."

Robert T. Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary pointed to pareidolia, confirmation bias and wishful thinking. He wrote that it is "not difficult to understand how many people see the Virgin Mary in the clouds, in a tortilla, … and in the bark of a tree." No one is reported to have accused Contreras of faking it.

Devotion took its toll. Visitors stripped bark as relics, and Santa Cruz County Parks fenced the tree. The fence became part of the shrine. In 1995, candles were reported to be endangering the tree and the image.

From 2009, some claimed the image had appeared on a second tree. In February 2015, the county announced plans to remove the dying oak as a fire and environmental hazard. Lookout Santa Cruz says it fell in a winter storm around 2015. The Pajaronian says only that it died and was removed.

The shrine remains. A cabinet holds a statue of the Virgin, among flowers, candles, photos, sonograms, shoes, hair and hats. Masses mark the June anniversary and the 12 December Feast Day. In 1996, Cherríe Moraga's play Watsonville: Some Place Not Here wove the vision on the tree trunk into the story of the strike and the 1989 earthquake.