<P> 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 the exceedingly long El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre el Río Porciúncula . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> 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 . Per 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 . </P>

Los angeles's full name is el pueblo de nuestra senora la reina de los angeles de porciuncula