The Mission San Gabriel Arcángel is a fully functioning Roman
Catholic mission and a historic landmark in San Gabriel,
California . Site of the first hospital in Alta California, the
settlement was founded by Spaniards of the Franciscan Order on
"The Feast of the Birth of Mary " (September 8 ) in 1771. The
Mission, often referred to as the "Godmother of the Pueblo of
Los Angeles," was designed by Father Antonio Cruzado (who hailed
from Córdoba, Spain , which accounts for the strong Moorish The
current prevailing theory postulates that Paleo-Indians entered
the Americas from Asia via a land bridge called "Beringia " that
connected eastern Siberia with present-day Alaska (when sea
levels were significantly lower, due to widespread glaciation)
between about 15,000 to 35,000 years ago. The remains of
Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces
of a very early habitation in California, dated to the last ice
age ) about 13,000 years ago. The first humans are therefore
thought to have made their