Dave asks:

> The original name for LA was, IFAIK, Ciudad de Los Angeles (an maybe
slightly
> different before it was a real city). Today, you will still here it
referred
> to a City of the Angels.  History buffs, was there an original "Pueblo de
Los
> Angeles" or mission of similar name?

Yes. BTW, the original name was: "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los
Angeles" (The Town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels).

Similarly, the complete name of Las Cruces is "El Jardin de Las Cruces" (The
Garden of the Crosses), given because a Spanish party of Conquistadors raided
an Apache stash of gold. When the Apaches caught up with them, they killed
them all. The next Spanish party that came through buried the bones of their
compatriots, and the graveyard appeared as a garden of crosses.

That particular Spanish party wasn't the only one to meet their fate in that
manner. The road from Chihuahua to Santa Fe was so dangerous that it came to
be called La Jornada del Muerto (the Journey of the Dead) [The most
well-known Jornada is now an experimental biological station (see:
http://usda-ars.nmsu.edu/)]. Of perhaps even greater interest, the stagecoach
that ran from El Paso to Tucson, running essentially through the middle of
the Apache's stronghold, was the last place in the United States where you
couldn't get life insurance for your trip up until the early 1900's.

Wirt Atmar

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