Site of Mission Vieja

Mission San Gabriel started here at the Whittier Narrows, where Crespí had noted the water five years before anyone built anything. Floods drove the fathers to rebuild five miles north, and the neighbourhood kept the name Misión Vieja for the next century. The tablet went up in 1921, paid for by Walter P. Temple, who grew up in this community and whose nine-year-old son found crude bubbling on the family's Montebello ranch in 1914. The wells came in three years later.

What the plaque says

This tablet was erected by Walter P. Temple and blessed by Right-Reverend John J. Cantwell, Bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles, July 31, 1921, to commemorate the founding of Mission San Gabriel Archangel, on this ground, at Old Mission by Rev. Fathers Angel Somero and Pedro B. Cambon, Sept. 8, 1771.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 4.9 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.
• Colorado Street Bridge — 9.4 mi
  Beaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.
• Santa Monica Pier — 24 mi
  Where the Mother Road runs out of continent, and where the End of the Trail sign gives the drive somewhere to finish.

More markers nearby

• Casa de Governor Pío Pico — 2.5 mi
• Grave of George Caralambo (Greek George) — 3.4 mi
• Rio San Gabriel Battlefield — 3.5 mi
• Savannah Memorial Park — 3.5 mi