Juan Bautista de Anza is considered one of the founding fathers of Spanish California.

He was born in 1736 in New Spain (what we now call Sonora, Mexico) into a family of military leaders. Most of his military actions involved taking on Native Americans while he explored what is now known as Arizona.

Near the end of the 1760s Spain began to colonize Alta California, which was basically anything not considered Baja California. They took a two-pronged approach; one expedition ran up the coast at sea, which turned out to be quite difficult because the winds were going the wrong way. The other path was over land, which was a little more direct and allowed the Spanish to establish several missions along the way.

In 1772 Anza proposed a new expedtion to Alta California, which was eventually approved by the King of Spain, and in January 1774 he set out from a place a little bit south of present-day Tuscon, Arizona. By April he’d reached Monterey, California before returning to the place he’d started.

October 1775 brought a new start to the expedition, this time with the goal of transporting colonists to Monterey. Having done that, he continued north until arriving at the arroyo of San Joseph Cupertino, which is now known as Stevens Creek. Two days later he’d spotted the San Francisco Estuary and identified the sites for the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asis.

Having established an overland route, Anza returned the way he’d come. Unfortunately in 1781 the Yuma Tribe closed off the trail at the Colorado River, which stayed closed until the 1820s, meaning that if you wanted to get to Alta California from Baja, for over 40 years you had to do it by sea.

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