 It became part of Rancho La Cañada, a Mexican land grant given in 1843 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to a Mexican schoolteacher from Pueblo de Los Ángeles, Ygnacio Coronel (1795–1862).La Crescenta does not mean "the crescent," which in Spanish would be "el creciente".From his home, early settler Benjamin B. Briggs "could see three crescent-shaped formations, which suggested to him the artificial name," accepted by the U.S. Post Office in 1888.