In 1542
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, with a commission from Viceroy
Antonio de Mendoza, was the first European to sail along and explore the California coast. Although he claimed all he saw as territory of the Spanish Empire, no efforts at colonization were made for over two hundred years. Concerned about colonizing efforts by the Russians and French, Spain set plans in motion in the 1760s to establish a presence and defend its claim to the territory. The Spanish settlement did not reach Alta California until 1769, when explorer
Gaspar de Portolà reached the San Diego area via the first land route from
Mexico. Accompanying him were two
Franciscan Padres,
Junípero Serra and
Juan Crespí, who recorded the expedition. As they came through today's
Elysian Park, they were awed by a river that flowed from the northwest, past their point and on southward. Crespí named the river
El Río de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula, meaning, in Spanish, "the River of Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula". The name derives from
Santa Maria degli Angeli (Italian: "St. Mary of the Angels") which is the name of the small town in Italy housing the
Porciuncula, the church where St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, carried out his religious life. The river that was called the Porciuncula is today's
Los Angeles River. Because the future town's name was a take on this "
Queen of Heaven" Marian title, various versions of Crespí's formula would be used for the town, including
El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles sobre el Río Porciúncula. During the expedition, Father Crespí observed a location along the river that would be good for a settlement or mission. However, in 1771, Father Serra instead commissioned two missionaries to establish the
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel-San Gabriel Mission near the present day
Whittier Narrows section of the
San Gabriel River. The missionaries encountered resistance from the
Tongva to their attempts to
resettle the Natives on the mission. The mission encountered further trouble in 1776 when a flood damaged the mission, convincing the missionaries to move and rebuild the mission on a higher and more defensible location: its present site in
San Gabriel. The first Spanish governor of
Las Californias,
Felipe de Neve had, as well, recommended to
Viceroy Bucareli Father Crespí's location on the Río Porciúncula (
Los Angeles River) for a mission. Instead, in 1781,
King Charles III mandated that a pueblo be built on the site instead, which would be the second town in Alta California, after
San José de Guadalupe in 1777. The monarch, disregarding the production and trade roles of the missions, saw a greater need for secular pueblos to be established as the centers of agriculture and commerce to supply the crown's ever-growing military presence in "Nueva California." The priests at the missions ignored the royal mandate and continued their ranching, trading and production of tallow, soap, hides, and beef, often in competition with new pueblo ventures.
Settlement Governor de Neve took his assignment seriously and had a complete set of maps and plans drawn up by May 1780 for the layout and settlement of the new pueblo, including the placement of government houses, town houses, the church, the fields, the farms, and access to the river – the
Instrucción and the
Reglamento para el gobierno de la Provincia de Californias. But gathering the
pobladores-settlers was a little more difficult. After failing to recruit the target number of families in
Sonora, he had to go as far as
Sinaloa to finally end up with 11 families, that is, 11 men, 11 women, and 22 children of various
Spanish American castes:
Criollo,
Mulatto and
Negro. As local lore tells it, on September 4, 1781, the 44
pobladores gathered at
San Gabriel Mission and, escorted by a military detachment and two priests from the Mission, set out for the site that Crespí had chosen. In reality, several of the families were probably already working on their plots of land as early as late July. Governor de Neve gave the new town the name
El Pueblo de la Reina de los Ángeles-The Town of the Queen of the Angels. In accordance with the
Laws of the Indies and
Reglamento the new towns in Alta California were to have four square
leagues of land; that is a distance marked by one league in each
cardinal direction from the town center. The streets, however, were laid out at forty-five degrees from the cardinal directions, a plan which is still preserved in
Downtown Los Angeles. The old town limits are still marked by Hoover and Indiana Streets in the west and east respectively. In 1784 an
asistencia or sub-mission of the San Gabriel Mission was established on the central
plaza, to provide religious services to the settlers.
Government ",
circa 1890–1900. The pueblo came under the jurisdiction of the
Commandancy General of the Internal Provinces in the
Viceroyalty of New Spain. As a pueblo, Los Angeles was granted a
cabildo (town council). The first municipal officers, the
regidores (council members) and
alcalde (municipal magistrate), were appointed by Governor de Neve. Subsequent ones were elected annually by the settlers, the
vecinos pobladores. Since the government of Las Californias had a strong military orientation in this early phase of colonization, the civilian
cabildo was originally supervised by a
commisionado (commissioner) appointed by the
comandante (commander) of the
Presidio of Santa Barbara, who was charged with making sure the
alcalde and
regidores carried out their duties correctly. The first
commisionado was
José Vicente Feliz, one of the soldiers who accompanied the original 44 settlers to the pueblo. The first recorded
alcalde was José Vanegas, who served in 1786 and 1796. Vanegas was first listed as an
Indian in the original 1781
padrón (register) but then as a
Mestizo in the 1790 census. The next few
alcaldes reflected the mixed population of the small settlement: José Sinova, a
Criollo, 1789;
Mariano de la Luz Verdugo, a Criollo, 1790; and Juan Francisco Reyes, a
Mulatto, 1793. Among the first
regidores were Felipe Santiago García (a Criollo) and Manuel Camero (a Mulatto in the 1781
padrón, and a Mestizo in 1790 census). In judicial affairs, both military and civil cases were appealed to the
Audiencia of Guadalajara.
La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles On 18 August 1814 Father Luis Gíl y Taboada placed the cornerstone of a new
Franciscan church amidst the ruins of the
original asistencia. The completed structure was dedicated on 8 December 1822. A replacement chapel, named
La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (The Church of Our Lady of the Angels) was rebuilt utilizing materials of the original church in 1861. The term
Reina (queen) was added later to reconcile the church's name with that of the town. The small chapel, also called "
La Placita" and "the Plaza Church," served the total
Californio and immigrant Roman Catholic community as the only church in the vicinity of the City of Los Angeles until the 1876 construction of the
Cathedral of Saint Vibiana. Saint Vibiana Cathedral became the English-speaking parish and
La Placita became the Spanish-speaking parish. "The Plaza Church" still stands today, exhibiting
Spanish Colonial and
Carpenter Gothic architectural styles. The Los Angeles parish was under the
Diocese of Sonora until 1840, when a new
Diocese of the Two Californias was established to serve the
Baja California Peninsula and Alta California. Both the dioceses of Sonora and the Two Californias were suffragan of the
Archdiocese of Mexico. ==Mexican independence and era==