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Where did Portolá go?
Although food was critically short and many of the men were ill, Portolá immediately set out to find the reported harbor of Monterey. Moving north from San Diego, he selected several possible mission sites, passed Monterey without recognizing the spot, and explored the region around San Francisco Bay before returning to San Diego in late January 1770. During the spring Portolá returned north and successfully located Monterey, where he and Serra established Mission San Carlos. Shortly thereafter Portolá returned to Baja California, where he remained as governor for several years.
Who translated Portolá's diary?
Portolá's diary of the 1769 expedition was translated by Donald E. Smith and Frederick J. Teggart as Diary of Gaspar de Portolá during the California Expedition of 1769-1770 (1909). There has been less written about Portolá than about his more famous companion, Fray Junípero Serra. Zoeth S. Eldredge, The March of Portolá and Discovery of the Bay of San Francisco (1909), contains much interesting material. The best firsthand account is in Francisco Palóu, Life of Fray Junípero Serra (trans. 1955). See also Richard F. Pourade, The Call to California (1968).
Who was the Spanish governor who established the first missions in Alta California?
The Spanish explorer and colonial governor Gaspar de Portolá (ca. 1723-ca. 1784) headed the Spanish expedition that established the first missions in Alta California.
What did the Portolá expedition see?
On November 4, the entire Portolá expedition saw the magnificent bay while crossing Sweeney Ridge.
When did the Portola expedition reach San Francisco?
The Portola expedition reached the San Francisco Peninsula by late October. On October 31, the crew climbed to the top of the western ridge of Montara Mountain west of San Bruno and sighted**** the Farallones Islands and to the north Cermeos Bahia de San Francisco (Drakes Bay) and Point Reyes.
What did Portola say about the Bay of San Francisco?
In his memoirs of this trip, written four years later, Portola spoke mainly of boredom, hunger and illness and said only of the San Francisco peninsula: I did not linger there, nor did I see anything worthy of description there, save only a labyrinth of bays and channels which inundate the territory. So modest was the Governor's view of the bay that it was not until 7 years later that the Spaniards settled its shores. And so it was that fog, chance and a misnaming had finally given birth to the Bay of San Francisco, site of the future Queen City of the West.
What was the first land exploration in California?
The Portola expedition of 1769, the first land exploration of California by Europeans, was a defining moment in the history of the region: it marked the end of the Spanish colonization of the New World and the beginning of the destruction of the California Indians.
Where did Cabrillo anchor his ship?
In the summer of 1579 he anchored his ship, the Golden Hind, in what was likely Drake's Bay, the bay South East of Point Reyes that Cabrillo had first sighted in 1542. (This bay was not named so until 1792 when English navigator Vancouver visited the area and named the bay in honor of the buccaneer).
Where did Cortez set up his expedition?
Cortez, the conqueror of the great Aztec Empire, was amassing a fleet near Acapulco on the Pacific coast of Mexico with the intention of discovering the mythical straits of Anian, the northern passage believed to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, hence providing a shortcut to the Orient. However, political struggles and other voyages of exploration delayed Cortez' plans for another 10 years. Finally in 1532, Cortez sent several ships up the Pacific Coast of Mexico. While this expedition was largely a failure, one vessel did reach the tip of Baja California, where Cortez himself established the first Californian colony in 1535 near present-day La Paz. The colony, however, was abandoned after only a year.
Who discovered the Great Bay?
It was not until 1769 that Europeans first sighted the bay during a land expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá and dispatched by Spain in a vain attempt to bolster its waning military influence in the region. To add to San Francisco's less-than-glorious beginnings, the Portola men only discovered the great bay by accident after overshooting their real target, Monterey, and then failed to even realize they were the first Europeans to sight the bay!
How many men did Portolá have?
Portolá and his party of sixty men (with a caravan of 200 horses and mules for riding and the pack train) came from San Diego in search of Monterey Bay, but from their overland approach, they failed to recognize it. The expedition members were hungry, lost, and sick after six months journey.
What did the Ohlone do?
For millennia the Ohlone people followed seasonal rounds of hunting, fishing, and managing the land for their needs. In 1769, about 2,000 Ramaytush Ohlone people inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula, living in a network of ten independent tribes. The Aramai tribe, of modern-day Pacifica, accompanied the explorers to the top of Sweeney Ridge, where the Portolá party became the first Europeans to see San Francisco Bay. The Spanish “discovery" of San Francisco Bay would soon mean the loss of Ohlone lives, homelands and traditional ways when Spanish colonization started seven years later.
What did the discovery of San Francisco Bay mean?
The Spanish “discovery" of San Francisco Bay would soon mean the loss of Ohlone lives, homelands and traditional ways when Spanish colonization started seven years later . Captain Gaspar de Portolá’s first sighting of San Francisco Bay has long been memorialized in the Bay Area.
Overview
Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira (January 1, 1716 – October 10, 1786) was a Spanish military officer, best known for leading the Portolá expedition into California and for serving as the first Governor of the Californias. His expedition laid the foundations of important Californian cities like San Diego and Monterey, and bestowed names to geographic features throughout California, many of which …
Early life
Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira, known in Catalan as Gaspar Portolà i Rovira, was born on 1 January 1716 in Os de Balaguer, in Catalonia, to a family of minor Catalan nobility.
Gaspar served as a soldier in the Spanish army in Italy and Portugal. He was commissioned ensign in 1734, and lieutenant in 1743.
Expedition to Las Californias
Spain was driven to establish missions and other outposts on the Pacific Coast north of the Baja California Peninsula by fears that the territory would be claimed by foreign powers, in addition to its Catholic proselytizing mission and insatiable need for additional sources of income. The English, who had established colonies on the East Coast of the continent and north into what is now Canad…
Second expedition
One of Portolá's officers, Captain Vicente Vila, convinced him that he had actually been exactly on the Bay of Monterey when he placed his second cross at what later became Pacific Grove. After replenishing supplies at San Diego, Portolá and Serra decided on a joint expedition by land and sea to again search for the bay and establish a colony if they were successful. The San Antonio sai…
Later life
Governor Portolá's task was finished. He then left Captain Pedro Fages in charge, and on June 9 he sailed for San Blas, never to return to Upper California. In 1776, Portolá was appointed the governor of Puebla. After the appointment of his successor in 1784, he was advanced money for expenses and returned to Spain, where he served as commander of the Numancia cavalry dragoon regiment. On February 7, 1786 he was appointed King's Lieutenant for the strongholds …
Legacy
A 9 ft (2.7 m) statue in Pacifica, California was sculpted by the Catalan sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs and his associate, Francesc Carulla. It was given to the people of California by the Catalan government in 1988.
The city of Portola in Plumas County, the town of Portola Valley in San Mateo County, and the Portola neighborhood of San Francisco were named after Porto…
Further reading
• Crespí, Juan; Alan K Brown (2001). A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769–1770. San Diego: San Diego State University Press. ISBN 1-879691-64-7.
• Nuttall, Donald A. (1971). "Gaspar de Portolá: Disenchanted Conquistador of Spanish Upper California". Southern California Quarterly. 53 (3): 185–198. doi:10.2307/41170367. JSTOR 41170367.
External links
• Biography of Gaspar de Portolá at the San Diego Historical Society website
• Early Exploration of San Diego: 1542 to 1769 at the California History & Culture Conservancy website (archived)
• Portolá's History and Statue in Pacifica, California(archived)
Overview
The Portolá expedition (Spanish: Expedición de Portolá) was a Spanish voyage of exploration in 1769–1770 that was the first recorded European land entry and exploration of the interior of the present-day U.S. state of California. It was led by Gaspar de Portolá, governor of Las Californias, the Spanish colonial province that included California, Baja California, and other parts of present-day Mexico and the United States. The expedition led to the founding of Alta California and contribute…
Background
Although already inhabited by Native Americans, the territory that is now California was claimed by the Spanish Empire in 1542 by right of discovery when Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific Coast. Cabrillo's exploration laid claim to the coastline as far north as forty-two degrees north latitude. This northern limit was later confirmed by the United States in the 1819 Adams–Oní…
Expedition
The first leg of the expedition consisted of five groups all departing from Baja California and heading north for San Diego. Three groups traveled by sea while two others traveled by land in mule trains. Three galleons, hastily built in San Blas, set sail for San Diego in early 1769: the San Carlos, captained by Vicente Vila, a lieutenant of the royal navy (whose diary survives ); the San Antonio, captained by Juan Pérez, a native of Palma de Majorca; and the San José. All three ship…
Interactions with Native Americans
For the most part, it was reported that interactions with Native American tribes in Alta California were peaceful without much conflict. Many were described as welcoming and helpful, as they offered guidance and supplies to the Spanish explorers. Friendly encounters with the native people had been a goal from the onset of the expedition, and the Spanish brought many items and trinkets with which they traded for supplies and used to create peaceful relations. They used val…
Legacy
The Portolà expedition was the first land-based exploration by Europeans of what is now California. The expedition's most notable discovery was San Francisco Bay, but nearly every stop along the route was a first. It is also important in that it, along with the later de Anza expedition, established the overland route north to San Francisco which became the Camino Real. That ro…
See also
• Timeline of the Portolà expedition
• The Californias
• Alta California
Further reading
• Costansó, Miguel (June 1992). Browning, Peter (ed.). The Discovery of San Francisco Bay: The Portolá Expedition of 1769-1770 / El Descubrimiento de la Bahía de San Francisco: La Expedición de Portolá de 1769-1770 (in English and Spanish). Translated by Maria L. Wait. Lafayette, California: Great West Books. ISBN 978-0944220061. (The Diary of Miguel Costansó)
• Culleton, James. Indians and Pioneers of Old Monterey. Academy of California Church History, 1950.
External links
• Diary of Gaspar de Portolá During the California Expedition of 1769-1770. Edited by Donald Eugene Smith and Frederick J. Teggart. University of California at Berkeley, 1909. Portolá's original diary in Spanish, alongside the English translation.
• The Portolá Expedition of 1769-1770: Diary of Vicente Vila. Edited by Robert Selden Rose, University of California at Berkeley, 1911. Presents Vila's original diary in Spanish, alongside the English translation.