Mission Santa Cruz was a Spanish mission founded by the Franciscan order in present-day Santa Cruz, California. The mission was founded in 1791 and named for the feast of the Exultation of the Cross, the name that the explorer Gaspar de Portolà gave to the area when he camped on the banks of the San Lorenzo River 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, the original inhabitants of the region, and later the Yokuts from the east. The settlement was the site of the first autopsy in Alta California. Photo by Carol Highsmith.