Retracing the Journey of Settlers on City’s 217th Birthday

Willard Hunter figures you need to walk in pioneers’ shoes if you really want to feel what it was like when outsiders arrived 217 years ago to create Los Angeles.

Which explains why the 83-year-old former Claremont educator and a group of local history enthusiasts were nursing blistered feet and aching legs Monday after walking from the San Gabriel Mission to Olvera Street.

Their step back in time was a nine-mile trek that retraced the footsteps of the 44 original settlers who crossed the Los Angeles River on Sept. 4, 1781.

Nearly 100 marched along sidewalks past quiet residential neighborhoods and through noisy industrial areas to reach downtown’s El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, where a daylong city birthday celebration was staged.

The welcome they received was far different from the one experienced by the original pioneers, known as Los Pobladores. So was their journey.

Four soldiers accompanied the 11 pioneer families loaded down with provisions and farm tools. It may have taken as long as two days to travel the meandering trail between the mission and the river. The land between the two points was dry and uninviting.

“In 1781, this was a desert. That’s why they had to get to the river,” Hunter explained as he walked briskly through an Alhambra manufacturing area that served as the halfway point. “This is not the most dramatic route.”

But it’s the most direct route, said walker Frank Bermel, a retired data processor who serves as a docent at the mission. Even though the nine-mile distance separated the fledging pueblo from the mission, it was so quiet 200 years ago that the mission’s one-ton bell could be heard at the riverbank settlement.

Monday’s walkers gathered at the mission in the 6 a.m. half-light. Led by descendants of the original settlers carrying American and Spanish flags, their procession headed west on Mission Road at a brisk pace.

The group was slowing down when it reached the present-day Los Angeles city limits at Alhambra Avenue, however. There were cautious moves around truck-trailers parked across the sidewalk outside a meat plant and past snarling junkyard dogs guarding fenced-in auto salvage yards.

Along Valley Boulevard, several people detoured into a doughnut shop for coffee. The whole group stopped for a water break a mile farther at Lincoln Park before turning west on Mission once more and crossing the river on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue before reaching Olvera Street.

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Life in the Los Angeles of old was on the minds of many. But not necessarily life of the pueblo days.

Commented Phillip Phinney, an Alhambra graduate student in history, “I’m not that old, but I remember the days without microwaves, phone answering machines, cable TV, beepers.”

Responded Mickey Honchell, a technical librarian from Hacienda Heights: “I can top that. I remember when City Hall was the tallest building in L.A.”

Retired college professor Robert Herman of Claremont, author of “Downtown Los Angeles, a Walking Guide,” outlined some of the restoration work done to 20th century downtown landmarks for the pair.

Bob Smith, a former Army intelligence officer from Wilmington whose ancestors were among the original band of Los Angeles settlers, is president of a group of 150 Los Pobladores descendants. Some in his group traveled the route in vans, dispensing water and tending to blisters.

Dick Ontiveros, a retired telephone engineer from San Gabriel, rode with a cousin, Gilbert Valenzuela, a retired environmental engineer from Monterey Park.

“We just found out we’re related in 1981,” Valenzuela said. Added Ontiveros, an eighth-generation Los Pobladores: “All of us are related. When you only have 11 families, you’re close-knit.”

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Los Pobladores group member Joe Northrop, a retired seafood importer from Eagle Rock, has taken part each Labor Day for 15 years. The trek was first done in 1981, when Hunter decided on a whim to retrace the route on his way to give a speech about the Los Angeles Bicentennial to a downtown Rotary Club.

Several children made Monday’s walk. Seven-year-old Matthew Hamilton stuffed a water bottle and granola bar in his school backpack and hiked with his mother, Denise Hamilton, and friend Carol Autenrieth, both of Culver City.

At Olvera Street, Matthew seemed to have more energy left than anyone as walkers arrived three hours after starting out. “I made it all the way on foot!” he shouted.

Hunter smiled wearily. “You can’t really appreciate what the pioneers did unless you do what they did--nine miles,” he said.