At an early date, Mission San Luis Rey became known as the King of the Missions.  It was once the largest building in California and remains the largest of the California missions. 

The complex is in the shape of a quadrangle with buildings of adobe construction.  The settlement became one of the most populous and prosperous settlements in the province in terms of size, population and production. 

According to early Native American writings, many natives lived at the nearby Native American Village or an outlying village. In family life the mother would stay at home tending to chores, the children went to school at the Mission, older children worked as an apprentice on farms or ranches, and the father went hunting with bow and arrow or gathered wood. It is not clear how many actually lived at the Mission.

By 1824 the Mission included a massive church, a friary, workshops, hospital, schoolrooms, communal kitchens, storehouses and homes for Luiseno Indian neophytes. 

In 1832, the neophyte population numbered over 5,000.  Moreover, 57,000 head of livestock grazed on Mission lands and the Mission produced 67,000 bushels of grain in a single year.  Three years later the settlement was officially secularized.