Barcode:
1000866
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Title: Los Angeles River
Description:
Los Angeles River at Fletcher Drive
Los Angeles River, the unpredictable! She has changed her name, often has she changed her course, and many times has she changed the topography of the land she flows through.
The first mention of our river by the white man is found in Fray Juan Crespi’s diary under the date of August 2, 1769. Fray Crespi was the diarist for the famed Portolá expedition that left San Diego, the first white settlement in California, July 14, 1769.
The expedition wended its way north by land to establish a settlement upon Viscaino’s Bay of Monterey, discovered but not settled 160 years previously. Nor did Portolá settle or find Monterey Bay, but went past its latitude to become the discover of San Francisco Bay.
After a weary march north from San Diego, Don Gaspar de Portolá’s party, consisting of 64 men, which included 27 leather-jacketed soldiers (soldados de cuera) under Rivera y Moncada, and six Catalan volunteers under Pedro Fages, with the Franciscan Father Crespi to record events, arrived on August 1 in the Arroyo Seco, about where Sycamore Grove is today. There they camped for the night.
The following morning, the march had resumed for about a league and a half when they came upon a beautiful river, where, due to its being August 2, the day for the great Indulgence of Our Lady of Los Angeles de Porciúncula, they stopped for the day that every man might receive the Atomement, and named the river Porciúncula. This was out Los Angeles River, and the spot they camped on was about where Broadway crossed the river today.
Since the entry in Fray Crespi’s diary is descriptive as well as highly prophetic, a quotation of the day’s entry is merited, as it is the first description ever given of the river or of the Los Angeles district:
Wednesday, August 2, 1769. We set out from the valley in the morning and followed the same plain in a westerly direction. After traveling about a league and a half through a pass between low hills, we entered a very spacious valley, well grown with cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a beautiful river from north northwest, and then doubling the point of the steep hill, it went on afterwards to the south. Towards the north northeast there is another river bed which forms a spacious water course, but we found it dry. (Arroyo Seco) This bed unites with that of the river, giving clear indication of great floods in the rainy season, for we saw that it had many trunks of trees on the banks. We halted not very far from the river, which we named Porciúncula. Here we felt three consecutive earthquakes in the afternoon and night. We must have traveled about three leagues today. This plan where the river runs is very extensive. It has good land for planting all kinds of grain and seeds, and it’s the most suitable site of all we have seen for a mission, for it has all the requisites for a large settlement.
Little did he realize how “large” a “settlement” would one day be here. But he continues:
August 3. At half past six we left the camp and followed the Porciúncula River which runs down the valley, flowing through it from the mountains into the plain. After crossing the river we entered a large vineyard of wild grapes and infinity of rose bushes in full bloom. Fray Crespi’s report was undoubtedly the reason for the founding of the Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, 12 year later, on the Rio Porciúncula, September 4, 1781. The first settlers immediately tapped the river with the Zanja Madre, and from that day on white men watched the moods of the Los Angeles River, wondering what new quirk she would take, and when.
According to the early Spanish records, our river behaved herself pretty well for the first 30 years or more of the life of the town. Through rains were often heavy, the growth of willow thickets in the river bottom from well into San Fernando Valley down to and beyond the lower limits of the pueblo tended to check its flow short of flood proportions.
The year 1815, however, was one never to be forgotten in the pueblo for, due to the heavy and continuous rains (it rained for 10 days and 10 nights without intermission), the river overflowed and changed its bed. The river moved over nearer the Plaza, running along the present North Spring Street (old San Fernando Street) to Alameda and down that thoroughfare to about First and Los Angeles Streets, down Los Angeles to Ninth Street, then west to Figueroa and down Figueroa and over to the ocean, where Playa del Ray is now located.
The Plaza was flooded to a depth of several inches, and the old Indian village of Yang Na that had stood for centuries was a sea of floating wickiups.
This flood not only changed the course of the river but also changed the location of the Plaza, which then stood about a block and a half northwest of the present Plaza. Governor Sola, in 1818, selected a location on higher ground and the Plaza was moved to its present site.
Another great flood in 1825 carried the Rio de Los Angeles back to its present bed and changed its outlet to the sea from its old course through the Ballena Rancho, or Ballona as it was more commonly called, to its present course into the bay at Wilmington.
This flood drained the marshlands between the pueblo and San Pedro, and caused the forests of sycamores and oaks, then growing abundantly, to disappear.
Besides cutting a definite channel to tidewater, the flood caused a union of our river with the San Gabriel River, just north of Cerritos Rancho, and they flowed together into San Pedro Bay until 1867, when the San Gabriel formed a new channel into Alamitos Bay.
In 1832, floods changed the drainage around the Compton district and dried up the few remaining lagoons. From then until the American occupation, the Los Angeles River behaved itself pretty well.
Subjects:
Roads
Buildings
Bridges
Hills
Collection: Padilla Collection 1908-1935
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