SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS

Motorcycle tours USA

Los Angeles Bikers presents Motorcycle tours USA, the discovery of Southern California: the San Gabriel Mountains.”The San Gabriel Mountains borrow their name from the nearby Spanish mission, but for decades they also bore a more poetic name: the Sierra Madre (Mother Mountains). Both names were handed down by the early Spanish missionaries and existed side-by-side until 1927, when the U.S. Board on Geographic Names acted on a petition from a Pomona College geographer and decided in favor of “San Gabriel Mountains.”

 “Sierra Madre” has since passed out of common usage, although it still survives in numerous place names, from the City of Sierra Madre to the Gold Line’s Sierra Madre Villa station, named after a tuberculosis sanitarium at the base of the mountains.”

Read more from Nathan Masters on KCET.ORG