Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail

The Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail is a 1,210-mile (1,950 km) National Park Service unit in the United States National Historic Trail and National Millennium Trail programs. The trail route extends from Nogales on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, through the California desert and coastal areas in Southern California and the Central Coast region to San Francisco.

Juan Bautista de Anza leading an exploratory expedition on January 8, 1774, with 3 padres, 20 soldiers, 11 servants, 35 mules, 65 cattle, and 140 horses set forth from Tubac Presidio, south of present-day Tucson, Arizona. They went across the Sonoran desert to California from Mexico by swinging south of the Gila River to avoid Apache attacks until they hit the Colorado River at the Yuma Crossing—about the only way across the Colorado River. The friendly Quechan (Yuma) Indians (2-3,000) they encountered there were growing most of their food using irrigation systems and had already imported pottery, horses, wheat and a few other crops from New Mexico. After crossing the Colorado to avoid the impassable Algodones Dunes, they followed the river about 50 miles (80 km) south to approximately Arizona’s southwest corner on the Colorado River before turning northwest near present-day Mexicali, Mexico and then turned north through present-day Imperial Valley and then northwest again before reaching Mission San Gabriel Arcángel near the future city of Los Angeles, California. The Pueblo de Los Angeles would be established in 1781 by eleven families recruited mostly from Sonora y Sinaloa Province. It took Anza about 74 days to do this initial reconnaissance trip to establish a land route into California. On his return trip he retraced his path to the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River and then went down the Gila River corridor until hitting the Santa Cruz River (Arizona) corridor and continuing on to Tubac, Arizona. The return trip only took 23 days as he now had found a trail with sufficient water to make land access to California possible. On the Gila river he encountered several extensive villages of Pima (Akimel O'odham) Indians. These were a peaceful and populous agricultural tribe with extensive crops and irrigation systems located along the Gila River.

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