Reopening the Anza Road

Abstract

Anza's achievement of 1774 in opening an overland route from Sonora to San Gabriel had proved that reaching the missions of Alta California did not necessarily involve either the voyage up the coast from Mexico to San Diego or Monterey or the trip across the Gulf of California to Baja California and a long land journey from there into Alta California. The Anza all-land route had served California well, albeit for only eight years. Over it had come the founders of San Francisco and some of the founders of Los Angeles. Settlements had been made on the Colorado river near the point where the road crossed it, although unhappily they were wiped out in 1781 by the very Indians who had begged Anza to have them established. Without the aid of these Yumas in crossing animals and baggage over the river, the road was useless, and Anza's heroic achievement bade fair to go for naught. Pedro Fages and an escort did make a trip over the route from the Yuma crossing to San Gabriel in 1782 with official dispatches; and in the same year he again traveled the desert part of it, leaving it at San Sebastiain to make his way through the mountains to San Diego by way of what later became Warner's