David K
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Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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EL CAMINO REAL in Baja (Part 11) San Fernando to Alta California
Baja Almanac page 15:
Mision San Fernando Velicata was the first Franciscan founded mission in California in 1769 (and the only one in Baja). Junipero Serra found the site
to be much more suitable than arid and limited Santa Maria de los Angeles, the final Jesuit mission (in California).
Junipero Serra's route north to San Diego bypassed El Rosario (the next mission, founded 5 years later) and instead went north past San Juan de Dios
and into the lower foothills of the Sierra San Pedro Martir not returning to the coastal plain until the San Telmo/ Colonet region of today.
Harry Crosby's book (GATEWAY TO ALTA CALIFORNIA) is a superior guide to Serra's exact route from El Rosario to San Diego.
The Camino Real to the next mission (Rosario, founded by the Dominicans in 1774) traveled west from San Fernando.
Where the arroyo bends south at the base of the petroglyph cliff, the old trail went into the small canyon just to the right/ north of that cliff and
continued west.
The next point on the Camino Real was a water hole called SANTA URSULA. Howard Gulick drove to Santa Ursula in 1953. The road to it is 2.0 miles west
of (now gone) Rancho Arenoso, on the old main road. Rancho Arenoso was just south of the highway at Km. 106 (west the the bridge named Arenoso I), the
ruins were visible from the pavement for many years, some still are.
Going south to Santa Ursula, 6.9 miles from the old main road, Gulick found an old adobe house, remains of an old dam and an irrigation ditch.
The next water hole was called AGUA AMARGA and is located on ARROYO SAN VICENTE, probably close to the merging with ARROYO LA BURRA. Another water
hole called LAS CUEVITAS was beyond Agua Amarga.
The Camino Real turns north up ARROYO EL SAUCE the turns west at about the 30? line of latitude passing the north side of MESA LA SEPULTURA and
crosses the Punta San Carlos road just south of Highway One.
A place called SAN ANTONIO was on the old trail. Continue west to the older road going from El Rosario to Punta San Carlos, which was reached about 5
miles southwest from El Rosario. The Camino Real and that auto road took the same route on to El Rosario.
From El Rosario north to Alta California both Highway One and El Camino Real were mostly parallel and close together. Exceptions would be were the ECR
went inland via Mision Santo Domingo and San Telmo de Arriba, staying in the foothills between San Quintin to just north of Colonet. Also San Vicente
to Santo Tomas was partly west of Highway One.
That's the end of this article!
Enjoy exploring Baja as much as the pioneers of the past and the adventurers of today!
By David Kier
[Edited on 1-5-2004 by David K]
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academicanarchist
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Coastal Region
Serra, by moving inland, missed the sites of a few Dominican missions: Santo Domingo (1775); San Vicente (1780); San Miguel (1787); and Santo Tomas
(1791).
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Packoderm
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It's funny that the missions didn't extend north into the Sacramento Valley. It seems like it would have been easy pickins up here. Who knows how
history would have turned out if they had?
I thought about this, and I was reading a U.S. history texbook. The Native Americans were harder to subjugate when they could more easily survive on
their own such as in the Central Valley. There was plenty of water in the Central Valley, and all they needed to get by on was acorns.
I have read about camels in the Arab countries, and how they would run away from their owners when it rained. The camels felt they no longer needed
their owners.
[Edited on 11/21/2003 by Packoderm]
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academicanarchist
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Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley
Time ran out for the mission program in California, which is why they did not establish missions in the valley. By about 1815, the Franciscans were
relocating hundreds of Yokuts and Miwoks to the existing missions, and there were plans to expand the missions inland. The Spanish/Mexican military
sent many expeditions into the valley to ostensibly punish the natives there, but really to bring them to the missions. In the far south of California
the Franciscans were also bring in Cahuilla from the hinterland of San Luis Rey-San Diego. Several of the larger satellite settlements, such as San
ANtonio de Pala, would probably have become missions that would have served as bases for the expansion into the interior. Initially, the missions were
established on or near the coast for easy communications by sea.
Having said that, an expansion of the missions into the interior valleys of California would have been difficult, even if the Mexican government had
not shut the missions down. By the 1830s, following several decades of military expeditions into the interior including the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Valleys, the natives in these regions resisted. They adopted the use of horses, and attacked the growing herds of livestock on the missions and the
private ranches carved out of former mission lands in the 1830s and 1840s. Neophytes who fled from the missions joined the interior tribelets, and
served as guides and transmitters of information about the coastal settlements.
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