Just finished and submitted a new Wikipedia article titled Timeline of the Portolà expedition (1769-70). That article is a continuation of the investigation begun with the Patch blog post below, now expanded to the whole expedition rather than just Santa Cruz. In addition to the new WP article, a whole slew of existing articles about places in California were updated with info about the day Portolà passed through.
South County was unfairly left out of the original post - it should be noted that the Pajaro (Spanish for bird) River was named by the soldiers of the Portolà expedition, because they found a large bird that had been stuffed by natives and left at an abandoned village near the river. At Pinto Lake, there's a mounted bronze plaque commemorating the expedition's first sighting of the Coast redwood tree ("palo colorado" in Crespi's diary), on October 10, 1769.
Additions to the original post are enclosed in square brackets, deletions indicated with strikeouts.
Names on the Signs: The Explorers (July 29, 2011)
In comparison to other parts of California,
Santa Cruz was missed by the early European explorers. First to come close was
the Spanish expedition led by Juan
Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed north from Mexico in 1542 on a
mission to explore the unknown coast. Cabrillo gave names to many places in California but, for some
reason, none of those names were retained by future Spanish explorers. Cabrillo
landed at places now known as San Diego, San Pedro and the [Santa Barbara] Channel Islands. He
sailed past Point Conception [named by Vizcaíno], missed the entrances to Monterey and San
Francisco bays, and made it as far north as the mouth of the Russian River
before turning back. On the way south, he found and sailed into Monterey Bay
but [apparently] didn’t land. Still, Cabrillo was the first European to come anywhere close
to Santa Cruz, so his is the oldest European name to appear on local signs - at
Cabrillo College.
The section of Highway 1 running through Santa Cruz County is
known by some as Cabrillo Highway. The photo is of a sign from San Mateo
County, but I haven’t found one locally. Maybe some observant blog reader knows
where there is one?
On the basis of Cabrillo’s voyage, Spain claimed the California coast as part
of New Spain, a huge area that included today’s Mexico and Central America in
addition to much of the south-western and south-central United States. England
also had colonial ambitions, and Queen Elizabeth dispatched Francis Drake in 1577 to
plant the British flag. During his round-the-world journey, Drake also sailed
north [south] along the California coast. The exact location of his landings is
unknown, but no one has ever claimed he stopped in Santa Cruz.
[Between Cabrillo and Portolà, the Mexico-Manila trade route was established. The return brought the galleons to the northern California coast, then south along (but usually not too close to) the coast. It's quite possible that one or more of the galleons sent parties ashore at Santa Cruz to get water and firewood, but there's no evidence.]
Spain moved to follow up on that brief flurry of exploratory activity. A second
sailing expedition, led by Sebastián Vizcaíno, arrived at the southern end of our bay in 1602.
Vizcaíno named it Bahia de Monterrey, after the Viceroy of New Spain.
The name stuck, superceding Cabrillo’s Bahia de los Piños (Bay of Pines).
Vizcaíno named lots of other places around Monterey and further south, but never came to our end of the
bay. His expedition left without establishing a settlement, and our quiet bay
was left to the Ohlone once again.
Over 150 years later, Spain was finally roused to action by the expansion of
British and Russian trading posts southward along the Pacific Coast from Alaska
and Canada. In 1769, an expedition commanded by
Gaspar de
Portolà set out from Mexico to rediscover the bay described by Vizcaíno.
They reached the bay on a typical summer day and found the bay obscured by fog.
They didn’t even realize they were in a bay. Thinking they had missed Monterey
Bay, Portolà
’s party turned north and marched until they got to a
large river which they named Rio de San Lorenzo. Crossing the river, they explored the area and found
a spring-fed creek which they named Arroyo Santa Cruz. The creek, which
flows into Neary Lagoon, is known today as Majors Creek or Laurel Street
Brook. Soon, Portolà moved on up the coast to discover the San Francisco Bay
before turning around and marching back to San Diego. He never returned to
Santa Cruz, but those two names [plus Pajaro] stayed on. More than 20 more
years were to pass before the next arrival of European visitors. These
Spaniards, however, came to stay.
