 Historic Wintersburg is considered part of California’s unrecognized Japanese Mission Trail, a new term used by "Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach", author Mary Adams Urashima, to bring attention to the migration and settlement path of California's Japanese pioneer communities.In 1885, the first Japanese mission in California—organized six decades after the last Spanish mission in 1823—marked the beginning of an effort by Japanese pioneers to establish communities as they assimilated to American life.While the twenty-one Spanish Franciscan missions were stationed approximately 30 miles apart—a day or two ride by horseback—the Japanese missions sprang up in communities where immigrants established themselves for work.