Cenotaph of Saint Junípero Serra in the Mission San Carlos Borromeo, Carmel-by-the-Sea (1924); Fr. Juan Crespí, who predeceased Serra, stands at the head, praying over him.
In 1769, Crespí joined the expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá and Junípero Serra (see Timeline of the Portolá expedition). He traveled in the vanguard of the land expedition to San Diego, led by Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada, where a presidio and mission were established. Crespí then continued north with Portolá and Rivera to identify the port of Monterey. Because he was the only one of the Franciscans to make the entire journey by land, Crespí became the first official diarist for the missions. He was one of three diarists to document the first exploration by Europeans of interior areas of Alta California.
Crespí is credited with giving Los Angeles its name, after having named the region's primary riverEl 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 town that later formed nearby took its name from this river. [3]
In 1772, Crespí accompanied Captain Pedro Fages on an exploration of areas to the east of San Francisco Bay. The Fages expedition members were the first Europeans to see the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin Valley.
In 1774, Crespí was chaplain of the expedition to the North Pacific conducted by Juan José Pérez Hernández. His diaries, first published in H. E. Bolton's Fray Juan Crespi (1927, repr. 1971), and published in the original Spanish with facing page translations as A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769-1770 (2001)[4] provided valuable records of these expeditions. One chapel he built, at the Misión San Francisco del Valle de Tilaco in Landa, is reported as still standing.[5]
The Trek of Father Crespi, 1777, by Katherine S. Works, 1938
^Crespí, Juan: A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769-1770, edited and translated by Alan K. Brown, San Diego State University Press, 2001, ISBN1-879691-64-7
^*Gross, Ernie. This Day in Religion. New York: Neil-Schuman Publishers, 1990. ISBN1-55570-045-4.
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