Mission Santa Cruz was established in 1791 and named for the feast of the Exultation of the Cross, the name that the explorer Gaspar de Portolà

Gaspar de Portolà

Gaspar de Portolà i Rovira was a soldier, governor of Baja and Alta California , explorer and founder of San Diego and Monterey. He was born in Os de Balaguer, province of Lleida, in Catalonia, Spain, of Catalan nobility. Don Gaspar served as a soldier in the Spanish army in Italy and Portugal...

 gave to the area when he camped on the banks of the San Lorenzo River

San Lorenzo River

The San Lorenzo River drains a large watershed in Santa Cruz County, California. The headwaters originate in the Santa Cruz Mountains at an elevation of , and the river flows through the San Lorenzo Valley before emptying into the Pacific Ocean at Monterey Bay...

 on October 17, 1769, and erected a wooden cross. As with the other California missions, Mission Santa Cruz served as a site for ecclesiastical conversion of natives, first the Ohlone

Ohlone

The Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley...

, the original inhabitants of the region, and later the Yokuts from the east.