The Anza Trail

Over the next few days I am going to be exploring the Anza Trail route - at least the part in the United States -  which extends from Nogales on the Arizona-Mexico border to the Sacramento Delta. Anza made this trip, his second trip to California, with a large contingent of settlers, soldados, and livestock in 1775-1776.  The trail has been recreated as part of the National Trails Project managed by the National Park Service.  I will be using the driving guide produced by Greg Smestad which givers detailed directions for driving and sits to see in each county from Santa Cruz in southern Arizona to Contra Costa in the Bay Area.  A few weeks ago I followed the directions from Rodeo in the East Bay, where Anza and some of this group camped and then they, and I, traveled along the west side of San Francisco Bay up through the Carquinez Straits and out into the delta area. There are a number of historical markers along the route and, most importantly, a museum dedicated tot he Anza expedition at the John Muir Historical Site in Martinez. One of the historic building on that site houses the museum. One of the exhibits in the museum is a large diorama depicting the expedition as it set out from Tubac in Southern Arizona.  The hundreds of people, and over a thousand head of cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs spread out in a large area over the desert landscape in the diorama. The display not only gives one a sense of the scope of Anza's enterprise, but reminds one of the difficulties in managing the whole affair.
As I was driving from San Diego on IS80 thr9ugh western San Diego County just south of the Anza Borrego desert, and then through Riverside County I was impressed with the ability of the Anza expedition to get through that country intact.  Only one life was lost on the trip - a woman who died after giving birth. There were several other children v=born on the trip. Most of the travelers were families -  mother, father and a number of children - often 5 or 6.  The expedition ended up with more members than it started with due to the number of children born along the trail.
AS I travel along the trail my intention is to take photographs that are tagged by location which then can be displayed on a map showing the location of each picture.  I took some photos when I explored the East Bay portion of the Anza Trail, but I did not have a GPS for my camera when I took those photos, so I have just placed them in the approximate location where the pictures were taken .  You can find the location of some of the photographs I took on the initial exploration on this map. Click the red dots or the thumbnails to see the picture.  When you click the thumbnail, the red dot indicating the location will "light up."
Some sources of information in this blog include the driving guide referred to above, other literature from the National Trails Project and, probably most importantly, a recent publication of a translation of the journal of Pedro Font. Font accompanied the Anza expedition as it chief diarist. His observations and documentation of the trip are considered a classic of the genre.  It was first, I think, translated by Bolton int he 1930s.  The current translation and extensive commentary is by Alan Brown in an Arthur H. Clark Co.  publication as Volume 1 of the series Early California Commentaries edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz. The title of Brown book is With Anza to California 1775-1776: The Journal of Pedro Font. O.F.M.