Gerónimo Boscana was an early 19th-century Franciscan missionary in Spanish Las Californias and Mexican Alta California. He is noted for producing the most detailed ethnographic picture of a Native Californian culture to come out of the missionary period, an account that "for his time and profession, is liberal and enlightened".
Father Gerónimo Boscana
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel is a Californian mission and historic landmark in San Gabriel, California. It was founded by the Spanish Empire on "The Feast of the Birth of Mary," September 8, 1771, as the fourth of what would become twenty-one Spanish missions in California. San Gabriel Arcángel was named after the Archangel Gabriel and often referred to as the "Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles."
A view of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in April 2005. The open stairway at the far right leads to the choir loft, and to the left is the six-bell campanario ("bell wall") that was built after the original bell structure, located at the far end of the church, toppled during the 1812 San Juan Capistrano earthquake.
The belfry of Mission San Gabriel, 1905
A streetcar of the Pacific Electric Railway makes a stop at Mission San Gabriel Arcángel c. 1905.