Santa Cruz County History Update: the Explorers

Recently, I've been revisiting the Portolà expedition of 1769-70, so it seems like a good time to update this post from August 12, 2011. The original plan for this blog was to proceed chronologically through Santa Cruz County history, and this post was third in that progression, after an introduction and the Ohlone.

The impetus for a new look at Portolà came from the discovery that translations of the three diaries kept by expedition members are now available online (see the Wikipedia article for links). For a history geek, it's fascinating to read those diaries and realize that they are the first written descriptions of those places ever recorded, and that the authors were actually camped at those unknown (to Europeans) places as they wrote.

The briefest diary was by Portolà himself; a longer one was written by military engineer Miguel Costanso, and the most detailed was by Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi. The Pacifica Historical Society has a great tool on its website - a day-by-day account with entries from all three diaries (watch out for a few transcription errors). At times, it would be helpful to also have the original Spanish alongside the English translations, but that project awaits some future web-savvy California historian.

The translator of the online version of the Crespi diary, Herbert Bolton, worked out the present-day locations of the places visited by the expedition during its travels, and shares that information in footnotes. That's very useful because:

1. The native Californians had no written languages to record their names for places,
   
2. Portolà and his companions were the first Europeans to see most of those places,
3. the Spaniards of the Portolà expedition did not attempt to transliterate very many of the native names they heard, and
   
4. very few of the Portolà names have survived. 

As noted in the original post, Santa Cruz was one of those few surviving Portolà names. Furthermore, our county is the only one in the state that preserves a Portolà expedition name (and it was almost Branciforte County). 

Wikipedia provided a handy place to post information about the expedition's stopping places, so there are now added bits of Crespi's diary in a bunch of articles, and a new "category" (found at the bottom of WP articles) called "Places of the Portolà expedition", where links to Portolà expedition-related articles can be found.

Those who also love geography already know about Google Earth. I had a great time using GE, in conjunction with the diaries, to follow the day-by-day progress of the explorers from San Diego to a wind-swept ridge overlooking San Francisco Bay.  In many places, the exact route remains in dispute, so the "geogrophiles" out there can have fun using zooming into the satellite views to compare the different possibilities. Another useful site was the USGS National Map, which combines current versions of all of the "quadrangle" topographic maps into one zoomable online map. Many old place names can be found on USGS maps.

Following is the original 2011 post, with inserted editorial comments enclosed in square brackets:

Original title: Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz: the Explorers

In comparison to other parts of California, Santa Cruz was missed by the early European explorers. The first voyage 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 Channel Islands. He sailed past Point Conception, missed the entrances to Monterey and San Francisco bays, and made it [one of his ships did, anyway] 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 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 [it should really be called Portolà 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? [Portolà Highway is an even more appropriate name because later explorers bypassed the coastal route in favor of the path followed by today's Highway 101]

On the basis of Cabrillo’s voyage, Spain claimed California as part of New Spain, a huge area that included today’s Mexico and Central America in addition to much of the southwestern 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 along the California coast. The exact location of his landings is unknown, but no one has ever claimed he stopped in Santa Cruz.

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 160 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 [by land and sea] from Mexico to rediscover the bay described by Vizcaíno. They reached the coast [from the Salinas Valley] on a typical summer day and found the view obscured by fog. They didn’t even realize they were on a bay.

Thinking they had missed Monterey Bay, Portolà’s party turned north and [after crossing and naming the Pajaro River] marched until they got to a large river which they [Crespi] named Rio de San Lorenzo. Crossing the river, they explored the area and found a spring-fed creek, which they [Crespi] 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 San Francisco Bay before turning around and marching back to San Diego. He never returned to Santa Cruz, but those three names stayed on. Portolà's name is memorialized on signs up and down the California Coast, but not a lot in the Santa Cruz area. We have Portola Drive out in Pleasure Point, but that's about it.

After Portolà, more than 20 more years were to pass before the arrival of more European visitors. The next Spaniards, however, came to stay. They were the missionaries.