page_title: Portolá expedition
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Portolá expedition / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Gaspar de Portolà held at the Parador de Turismo de Arties, Portolà's family home in Catalonia (today a cultural center)
context_page_description: The Portolá expedition was a Spanish voyage of exploration in 1769–1770 that was the first recorded European land entry and exploration of the interior of the present-day U.S. state of California. It was led by Gaspar de Portolá, governor of Las Californias, the Spanish colonial province that included California, Baja California, and other parts of present-day Mexico and the United States. The expedition led to the founding of Alta California and contributed to the solidification of Spanish territorial claims in the disputed and unexplored regions along the Pacific coast of North America.
context_section_description: Although already inhabited by Native Americans, the territory that is now California was claimed by the Spanish Empire in 1542 by right of discovery when Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the Pacific Coast. Cabrillo's exploration laid claim to the coastline as far north as forty-two degrees north latitude. This northern limit was later confirmed by the United States in the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty.
  A competing claim was established for England in 1579 by the privateer Francis Drake, who followed the trans-Pacific route from the Philippines established by the Manila Galleons and reached the California coast near Cape Mendocino, from which he then sailed south along the coast at least as far as Point Reyes. In 1596, a Portuguese captain sailing for Spain, Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho (Spanish: Cermeño) explored some of the same coastline, leaving a description of coastal features. The Portolá expedition carried a copy of Cermeño's writings to guide them along the coast.
  Cermeño was followed in 1602 by Sebastián Vizcaíno, whose coastal explorations in 1602 surveyed several California locations for future colonization, including San Diego, the California Channel Islands and Monterey. Vizcaíno sailed north from Mexico (as Cabrillo had done), a much more difficult undertaking because of the prevailing winds and ocean currents. After Vizcaíno, however, the Spanish Empire did little to protect or settle this region for the next 160 years, and accomplished almost no exploration by land. Affairs in Europe took precedence, keeping all of the maritime powers occupied. The little settlement that did occur included the establishment of several missions on the Baja California Peninsula by Spanish Jesuit missionaries.
  Then, in 1767, Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuit order from the Spanish kingdom. Gaspar de Portolá, a Catalan military officer and colonial administrator, was appointed governor of the new province of Las Californias and sent to dispossess the Jesuits and replace them with Franciscans, who would set up their own network of missions in the colony. Gaspar came from a military background and had served as a captain of the dragoons of the Regiment of Spain immediately before being appointed governor. When he first sailed to Baja California as the new governor he brought with him 25 dragoons and 25 infantrymen in order to help him with his expulsion of the Jesuits and, eventually, the further exploration of the rest of California. His military background would prove very helpful during the expedition.
caption: Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira
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