Walking from Sonora, Mexico to San Francisco in 1775


Walk with me. It's 1775 and we're in New Spain, in what is now the country of Mexico. We will be walking with Captain Juan Bautista and his soldiers up to what is now San Francisco. I will use modern terms, but really, we're just walking across the desert, and then along the ocean. Lets walk...

Of course we're speaking Spanish, because we're from Spain. Bautista is guiding people like us to colonize the area called Alta California, which now is usually just called California. It's a long walk, so let's get started.

Yes, we have carts, and horses and mules, but we'll walking. In movies, people rode in wagons, but the reality is that the wagons carried things, and people carried themselves, even the women and children. And our route will take us from places where we can get water, and cross rivers. Bautista says he knows the way, and all we have to do is follow him.

We're heading north towards Tucson, Arizona, which was just established that year, and we're headed for the Pima Villages, so once we get past Picacho Peak, we start to head northwest.

The Pima Villages are at what is now the city of Maricopa, which is south of Phoenix. The Pima people are not nomadic, or warring, they're agricultural. They've been living along the Gila River for hundreds of years, and without them, we wouldn't have had a chance to make it even this far. Some day the Pima people will help with the establishment of Phoenix, but that would be up in the Salt River Valley, which is a war zone, protected by the Apaches, so we don't go there. We need to cross the Colorado River, so we need to follow the Gila River going southwest.

The only crossing of the Colorado River is at what is now called Yuma. It was quite nice along the Gila river, which gave us some fresh water, even though it was muddy. Now that we've crossed the Colorado River we are walking now across the desert heading due west for what will someday be San Diego. I understand the weather there is nice, so I'm anxious to get there!

Once we get to San Diego, we need to go north along the coast. Missions will be established every thirty miles or so, starting with San Diego. The Pacific Ocean is so beautiful! Spain has been sailing along this coast for about a hundred years, so from this point on we really do know where we're going. We just need to stay along the coast, on what will someday be called El Camino Real - the King's Highway, and the Pacific Coast Highway, California Route 1. If we just keep the Pacific Ocean on our left we'll be fine.

Modern view of Southern California, near Calabasas. This about what it would have looked in 1775, but the trail wouldn't have been as clearly marked.

Our journey takes us past what will someday be Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Monterey. Our final destination is a great bay, which some day will be where the city of San Francisco is.

Thank you for walking with me.

Image at the top of this post: Mission Dolores in San Francisco. Founded in 1776, it's still there. Photo by Roger Hall, used with permission.
Become a PhD (Phoenix History Detective) with Brad today on Patreon!

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring posts are shared there daily including "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona. Discounts for seniors, students, teachers, and veterans.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more