Discovery of the Americas, 1492-1800

connection would also enable colonists to
reach the coast in larger numbers. In 1773 per-
mission to find a route was granted to Juan
Bautista de Anza, a cavalry captain in com-
mand of the presidio of San Ignacio de Tubac,
at the present-day southernArizona town of
Tubac. Ironically, Anza’s father, also named
Juan Bautista de Anza, once had aspired to fol-
low the Gila River westward to California. The
elder Anza had requested permission for just
such an expedition but was killed in an
Apache ambush in 1740.

The younger Anza left Tubac on January 8,

1774, with 33 others, including Fray Francisco

Garcés, a Franciscan missionary who had

already made trips from San Xavier del Bac

along the Gila and Colorado Rivers alone,

much as Eusebio Kino had done decades ear-

lier. Anza and Garcés both detailed the jour-

ney in official diaries. At the meeting of the

Gila and Colorado Rivers, Anza paused to

renew his friendship with a Yuma chief

known as Salvador Palma, whom Fray Garcés

had also met in his earlier wanderings in the

The Road to California B 153

the 1770s, but missions remained at the center of colonial life into the early

1800s. While their cultural role remains controversial, the architecture of the

missions remains one of the most historically important reflections of early

Spanish America.

Junípero Serra established the mission at San Carlos Borromeo in present-day

Monterey, California, in 1770. The mission was moved to Carmel Valley the next

year and has been destroyed and rebuilt over the years since then. The completely

restored building is shown in this 1940 photograph.(Library of Congress, Prints and

Photographs Division [HABS, CAL,27-CARM,1-6])