Anza´s Expeditions to California

On January 1774, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza left Tubac with a small escort of 20 soldiers, twelve servants, and some 200 head of cattle. Two days earlier, the Apache Indians had stolen the horses from the Presidio, and although the soldiers tried to get them back, the effort was useless. In any case, Anza started his trip trying to establish a land route to link Sonora with the Spanish settlements in Alta California.

The explorers followed the route of Caborca until they arrived at the confluence of the Gila and Colorado rivers, and crossing the river, they searched for a pass between the California mountains that would allow them to get to the coast. Finally, on March 22, they arrived at the San Gabriel mission.

On August 20, 1775, after the return of the expeditionaries, Hugo O´Connor, who had been entrusted with the job of relocating the frontier presidios, decided to move Tubac to Tucson, as well as Fronteras to San Bernardino, and Terrenate to a place on the San Pedro River, named Santa Cruz Gaybanipitea.

That same year, another Franciscan friar reported from Tumacacori on the existence of only one visita of that mission, Calabazas, with 141 inhabitants, who had arrived there from the abandoned Sonoita and Guevavi, terrified "by the furious hostility of the Apaches..."

After Anza´s return from California, he went to Horcasitas looking for voluntaries for a second expedition to California. On September 29, 1775, another 177 aspiring colonists left from Horcasitas, among them the franciscan friar, Pedro Font.

Thanks to his trip diaries, we have a chronicle of the route they followed. Let´s see how he describes the pass where Nogales is located today. It was the month of October.

12 Thursday. I said mass, and it is the first one I have said in my tent who was the portable church of the expedition. We left near Ymuris at eight thirty in the morning, and at one PM we stopped at the Gambut, which is a canyon, having traveled four leagues going Northnorthwest. Soon after this canyon, we found Los Alisos. The Gambut canyon, who follows, is a very dangerous pass, where the Apaches and the untamed Piatos have made several killings, so we stopped to pass it slowly tomorrow, al ltogether with our animals.

We can imagine even today, while traveling along the highway, how worried the expeditionaries must have been when they crosssed the Gambut. The name has changed only a little during the two and a half centuries since then. Bambuto.

But let´s return to the franciscan:

Friday 13: I said mass. We left El Gambut at eight in the morning, and by one PM we stopped at el Cibuta, having traveled four leagues going North, very slowly in the Gambut canyon to be all together and that the group would not separate.

Saturday 14: We left Cibuta at eight in the morning, and at three PM we stopped in the so called Las Lagunas place, having traveled some eight long leagues going Northwest and four Northnorthwest. More or less in the middle is the Agua Zarca place, which is a small spring. All along the road follows the right side of a high mountain range with a lot of trees, which all from Dolores, and even before, are connected until the presidio of Tuquison and end up in the Gila river. On the left side, some lower mountaints can be seen, and behind them a higher mountain range that begins at the Santa Maria Magdalena, and ends up in Arivaca, Arizona, and place of Las Bolas of virgin silver that the land produced there, and all of those mountains are said to have minerals.

Even today, we can recognize many of those place names. Names like Cibuta and Agua Zarca, while the Lagunas are located near the golf court of Nogales, Arizona.

In those days, the region of the Nogales creek was depopulated, and it didn´t deserve being mentioned by the expeditionaries.

Sunday 15. Being the place in danger of enemies, the Commander didn´t want me to say mass there, so in spite of being Sunday, I left the people without mass, and went ahead with four soldiers and said it in the town of Calabazas, which is two leagues distant from where we slept, a little separated from the main road.

Calabazas was located in the confluence of Sonoita Creek with the Santa Cruz river, near today´s Ambos Nogales Wastewater Treatment Plant, close to Rio Rico. The town, who was inhabited then only by Pima Indians, must have happily received the visitors, who helped them forget for a few moments the decadence in population, and the continuous attacks by the Apaches.