New Name for Ortega Highway

* In the article on renaming the Ortega Highway to honor state firefighters (“Road to Remembrance,” April 12), there is a correction to be made on the historical reference to my ancestor, Sgt. Jose Francisco de Ortega, for whom the highway was named.

Ortega did not “come from San Juan Capistrano and [bring] Spanish soldiers along what was a trail at that time,” as Mayor Gil Jones said. Ortega was the pathfinder for the Gaspar de Portola expedition, which came up from Loreto, Baja California, on March 9, 1769, with Father Junipero Serra along with a dozen soldiers, servants and 44 Indians, to establish the Presidio of San Diego and missions of San Diego and Monterey.

Their journey northward, on a route that would come to be known as El Camino Real, was in a quest to reach the Bay of Monterey, but due to their maps (drawn from the seaward side in the 1500s) they didn’t recognize the bay. In November 1769, they continued north where Ortega discovered the Bay of San Francisco, hence the naming of the bay honoring him.

In 1773, he was promoted to cavalry lieutenant by Gov. De Neve, and while serving as commander of the mission at San Diego, he was ordered to establish a mission at San Juan Capistrano. Later, he was made the first commander of the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara where he spent his remaining days.

Yes, indeed, the Ortega Highway has “historical significance,” as Jones said. While I welcome any deserving tribute to our heroic firefighters, the highway will always remain “Ortega Highway” to me--serving as a reminder of how proud I am to be a ninth-generation Californian and a descendant of Ortega.

JEAN BROTHERTON

Laguna Beach

* Not to diminish the heroics of state firefighters, but have the state legislators no shame for forsaking Orange County’s past by discarding a highway name that honored one of the icons of early California history?

Sgt. Jose Francisco de Ortega not only traveled to Alta California with Spanish leader Gaspar de Portola’s expeditions, but he was one of the soldiers who accompanied Father Junipero Serra to the founding of the first of the 21 missions, in San Diego in 1769. Ortega, promoted to lieutenant, was also the military escort for Padre Fermin Francisco de Lausen in the founding of the San Juan Capistrano Mission in 1775. Ortega’s historic march marked other pathways.

The thousands of schoolchildren who visit San Juan Capistrano Mission can relate to Ortega and California’s beginnings when they view the cross streets of Ortega Highway and El Camino Real (“The Royal Highway”) at the gates of the historic shrine, Father Serra’s mission. Ortega Highway stands as a visual paradigm of this pioneer outpost.

Yes, erect a memorial for the firefighters on Ortega Highway, or name a new highway or building in their honor, but in doing so, do not abandon California history.

MEL MITCHELL

San Clemente