Key figures: Juan Bautista de Anza, José Joaquín Moraga, Francisco Palóu, Pedro Benito Cambón, Pedro Font
Summary
In the same year that the thirteen Atlantic colonies declared their independence, Spain extended its empire to the shore of San Francisco Bay on the Pacific coast of North America. The settlement grew out of the overland colonizing expedition led by Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, who marched roughly 240 soldiers, settlers, and their families from Tubac in the province of Sonora (in present-day Arizona) across the deserts of the Southwest to Alta California in 1775–1776. Anza reached the tip of the San Francisco peninsula and selected the sites for a presidio and a mission on March 28, 1776, then returned south, leaving his lieutenant, José Joaquín Moraga, to carry out the settlement. The military post — El Presidio Real de San Francisco — was formally dedicated on September 17, 1776, and the Franciscan Mission San Francisco de Asís, soon known as Mission Dolores, was dedicated on October 9, 1776. Together they marked the northernmost permanent outpost of New Spain and founded the European settlement that would become the city of San Francisco.
The Anza Expedition
The settlement of San Francisco was the culmination of Spain’s effort to secure Alta California against rival European powers and to link its scattered coastal missions and presidios. Juan Bautista de Anza had pioneered an overland route from Sonora to California in 1774; the following year he led a second, much larger expedition of colonists northward. The party, which included the diarist and chaplain Father Pedro Font, endured a winter crossing of the deserts and arrived at Monterey early in 1776 before pushing on to the San Francisco Bay. On March 28, 1776, Anza fixed the location of the future presidio on the windswept heights above the Golden Gate and chose a site for the mission beside a small stream and lagoon. Having completed his charge, Anza turned back toward Mexico, entrusting the actual founding to Moraga.
The Presidio and the Mission
On June 29, 1776 — the feast of Saints Peter and Paul — the settlers under Moraga and the missionary Francisco Palóu celebrated the first Mass at the camp beside the Laguna de los Dolores, the marshy lagoon that would lend the mission its enduring nickname. Over the following months Moraga’s party built the presidio’s fortifications and quarters overlooking the entrance to the bay. The post was dedicated on September 17, 1776, as El Presidio Real de San Francisco, garrisoned to defend Spain’s claim to the harbor and to protect the mission.
The Mission San Francisco de Asís was formally dedicated on October 9, 1776, founded by the Franciscan friars Francisco Palóu and Pedro Benito Cambón under the authority of Father Junípero Serra, the father-president of the Alta California missions. It was the sixth of the chain of twenty-one missions the Franciscans would eventually establish in California. The mission and presidio formed the twin institutions — religious and military — through which Spain held and colonized its frontier.
Significance
- A city’s origin: The presidio and mission of 1776 are the founding institutions of San Francisco, one of the major cities of the modern United States; the original adobe chapel of Mission Dolores survives as the oldest intact building in the city.
- The northern limit of New Spain: San Francisco marked the farthest permanent advance of the Spanish Empire up the Pacific coast of North America, securing the bay against Russian and British encroachment from the north.
- A continent in transition: The Spanish settlement of San Francisco Bay in September–October 1776 coincided with the Declaration of Independence on the Atlantic seaboard months earlier, illustrating how 1776 reshaped North America from both coasts — one event founding a republic, the other extending an empire.
- Colonization and its consequences: The mission system imposed profound and often devastating change on the Indigenous Ohlone peoples of the Bay Area, through conversion, forced labor, and exposure to European disease — a legacy central to later histories of California.