Juan Bautista de Anza

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Juan Bautista de Anza
Portrait by Fray Orcí, 1774.
55th Governor of Province of New Mexico
In office
1778–1788
Preceded byFrancisco Trevre
Succeeded byFernando de la Concha
Personal details
Born
Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto

July 6/7, 1736
Fronteras, New Navarre, New Spain
(now Sonora, Mexico)
DiedDecember 19, 1788 (1788-12-20) (aged 52)
Arizpe, New Navarre, New Spain
ProfessionExplorer and Governor of New Mexico
Signature

Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto (July 6 or 7, 1736

Spanish California and served as an official within New Spain as Governor of the province of New Mexico.[2]

Early life

Equestrian statue of Anza at Lake Merced, San Francisco, California.

Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto was born in Fronteras, New Navarre, New Spain (today Sonora, Mexico) in 1736 (near Arizpe), most probably at Cuquiarachi, Sonora,[3] but possibly at the Presidio of Fronteras.

His family was a part of the military leadership in

captain by 1760. He married in 1761. His wife was Ana María Pérez Serrano (b. January 1744/45, d. date unknown), the daughter of Spanish mine owner Francisco Pérez Serrano. They had no children. His military duties mainly consisted of hostile forays against Native Americans, such as the Apache, during the course of which he explored much of what is now Arizona
.

California expeditions

Juan Bautista de Anza, from a portrait in oil by Fray Orsi in 1774
Map of the route that Juan Bautista de Anza traveled in 1775–76 from Mexico to today's San Francisco

The Spanish began colonizing

San Francisco, which Portolá saw but was not able to colonize. By the time of Juan Bautista de Anza's expedition, three more missions had been established, including Mission San Antonio de Padua in the Salinas Valley
.

In 1772, Anza

Colorado River at its confluence with the Gila River. This was in the domain of the Yuma
tribe, with which he established good relations.

Anza reached

Russian colonization of the Americas advancing from the north, and possibly establish a harbor that would give shelter to Spanish ships. The expedition got under way on October 23, 1775, and arrived at Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
in January 1776, the colonists having suffered greatly from the winter weather en route.

The expedition continued on to Monterey with the colonists. Having fulfilled his mission from the Viceroy, he continued north with the priest Pedro Font and a party of twelve others, following an inland route to the San Francisco Bay established in 1770 by Pedro Fages.[citation needed] On the way, he led a raid on Apache settlements near Presidio San Ignacio de Tubac, capturing forty Apaches. The soldiers divided the captives among them as slaves; Anza kept the fifteen female captives and their newborns as his share.[6]

In Anza's diary on March 25, 1776, he states that he "arrived at the arroyo of

Mission Santa Clara de Asis and the town of San José de Guadalupe (modern day San Jose, California), but again did not establish either settlement.[8] Today this route is marked as the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail
.

Despite DeAnza's successes, Spanish ambitions to establish a permanent overland route from Sonora to Alta California were thwarted in 1781, when a revolt of the Yumas tribe closed the trail at the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River. The route was not reopened until the later 1820s, and the only regular travel to Alta California during the intervening years was by sea.

Governor of New Mexico

Portrait by Gerald Cassidy.

On his return from this successful expedition in 1777 he journeyed to

Governor of the Province of Nuevo México, the present day U.S. state of New Mexico
.

Governor Anza led a

Fountain Creek, he crossed the Arkansas River near present-day Pueblo, Colorado. He found the main body of the Comanche on Greenhorn Creek, returning from a raid in Nuevo México, and won a decisive victory. Chief Cuerno Verde, for whom Greenhorn Creek is named, and many other leaders of the Comanche were killed.[9]

In late 1779, Anza and his party found a route from

Pecos Pueblo.[10] This paved the way for traders and the development of the Comanchero
trade.

Juan Bautista de Anza remained as governor of Nuevo Mexico (New Mexico) until 1787 when he returned to

Sonora. He was appointed commander of the Presidio of Tucson
in 1788 but died before he could depart and take office. He was 52 years old. Anza was survived by his wife.

Juan Bautista de Anza died in Arizpe, in what is now the State of Sonora, Mexico, and was buried in the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Arizpe. In 1963, with the participation of delegations from the

San Francisco
, he was disinterred and reburied in a new marble memorial mausoleum at the same Church.

Statue by Dorr Bothwell in Riverside, California.
Juan Bautista de Anza's burial site in Arizpe, Sonora.

The primary legacy is the

Las Californias[11] In the San Fernando Valley the trail crosses the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve, and in the San Gabriel Valley the trail is in the Puente Hills just north of Whittier, California.[12][13]

Also named for Anza is

San Diego.[14] The de Anza Country Club and its 18-hole championship Golf course is located within the village of Borrego Springs, California
, which is entirely surrounded by the park.

A building named the Juan de Anza House in San Juan Bautista, California is a National Historic Landmark. However, it was constructed c. 1830 with its connection unclear. The Juan Bautista de Anza Community Park is in Calabasas, California, and De Anza Park and the De Anza Community and Teen Center are in Ontario, California.

A 20-foot (6.1 m) statue of Anza, sculpted in 1939, is located in

Los Angeles Central Library.[17][18]

The de Anza and De Anza spellings are also the namesake of streets, schools, and buildings in his honor including: De Anza Boulevards in

De Anza Hotel in San Jose, and the historic De Anza Hotel in Calexico—all in California
.

Using just Anza in his honor are: Anza Vista Avenue within the

Palm Springs
.

Also named in his honor is Juan Bautista Circle in the

Parkmerced
development in San Francisco.

Footnotes

  1. .
  2. ISBN 0-87417-625-5. Retrieved 16 February 2014.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)[permanent dead link
    ]
  3. .
  4. .
  5. ^ Web de Anza. The Basque surname was simply Anza, without "de" Archived 2016-03-20 at the Wayback Machine
  6. .
  7. ^ de Anza, Juan Bautista (1776). Diary of Juan Bautista de Anza October 23, 1775 – June 1, 1776. "Anza 1776 Colonizing Diary". Archived from the original on 2009-11-25. Retrieved 2009-12-14. Accessed September 8, 2009 University of Oregon Web de Anza pages
  8. ^ Edward F. O'Day (October 1926). "The Founding of San Francisco". San Francisco Water. Spring Valley Water Authority. Archived from the original on July 27, 2010. Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  9. OCLC 68116825
  10. ^ National Park Service: Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail
  11. ^ Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space: de Anza Trail
  12. ^ Puente Hills Habitat Authority Archived 2009-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ "Tour Anza Borrego Desert". CaliforniaResortLife. Archived from the original on 2015-12-22. Retrieved 2015-12-15.
  14. ^ Patterson, Tom. Landmarks of Riverside, and the Stories Behind Them. The Press Enterprise Company, Riverside, CA, 1964. pp. 174–175.
  15. ^ Statue in Lake Merced
  16. ^ "Painted Decoration: Goodhue Building". Los Angeles Public Library. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  17. ^ Imharnish (13 June 2022). "Mary Mallory: Hollywood Heights – Central Library Murals". L.A. Daily Mirror. Retrieved 1 October 2023.

Further reading

  • J. N. Bowman and R. F. Heizer, "Anza and the Northwest Frontier of New Spain," Southwest Museum Papers: No. 20. Los Angeles, CA: 1967.
  • Carlos R. Herrera, Juan Bautista de Anza: The King's Governor in New Mexico. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.
  • Wilfred Martinez, Anza and Cuerno Verde, Decisive Battle.

External links

Preceded by
Governor of New Mexico

1778–1788
Succeeded by