Captain Portola's Trail

Baptism at Aguaje de la Piedra

The year was 1769, and Imperial Spain had been a world power for a little more than three centuries. But now, word came that Russian ships were nosing about mainland California, a territory Spain had claimed by right of discovery back in 1542, but had not colonized.

In answer to this alarming news, the king authorized a multi-faceted voyage of exploration, led by army captain Gaspar de Portolá, recently appointed governor of Spain’s Two Californias: the lower, or Baja, peninsula where they had established a few settlements, and the upper, or Alta, neglected mainland.  

The expedition had four objectives. First, to assert Spanish control with a military and missionary presence; then to maintain that control by converting the native heathen to Christianity and teaching them to become productive Spanish citizens. Further, to find and establish a settlement at the “port of Monterey,” a natural harbor sighted from shipboard 167 years before by the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaíno; and, of course, to continue general explorations northward and chase away any unwanted intruders.

On July 16, Father Junípero Serra, the expedition’s spiritual leader, founded the first mission at San Diego and remained there, as Portolá resumed the march northward to rediscover Monterey. On July 22, 1769, he entered what is now Orange County, leading a little company of soldiers, and two friars, Juan Crespi and Francisco Gómez. While there isn’t a formally designated “Portolá’s Trail,” his general path can be traced through various locations in the southland.  

Having passed through low, open mountain country, the party made camp for the night near Panhe, the Indian village north of the beach at San Onofre. Here the priests performed the first Christian rites in Alta California, the baptism of two very ill little girls of the Acjachemen people. The soldiers named the place Los Cristianitos (the little Christians) and it is still called Cristianitos Canyon. The site of the baptism is the spring called Aguaje de la Piedra, now within the boundaries of Camp Pendleton. A sign, California Historic Landmark 562, stands at the turnout to Cristianitos Road.

The next day, July 23, 1769, Father Crespi’s diary relates that they came to “a very pleasant green valley, full of willow, alders, live oaks, and other trees not known to us. It has a large arroyo (watercourse), which at the point where we crossed it carried a good stream of fresh and good water, which . . . formed in pools in some large patches of tules. We halted there, calling it the valley of Santa Maria Magdalena.” Today it is called San Juan Capistrano, where, in 1776, the priests would establish a mission near the banks of San Juan Creek.

From there, Portolá’s trail lay along the foothills east of the Sana Ana Valley, and across the Puente Hills into Los Angeles County. On July 24, 1769, they made camp on Trabuco Creek, at a place near the modern town of Rancho Santa Margarita, where there was a village of friendly Indians. At this camp the explorers rested for two days. On July 26 they moved on a short distance to a spot where Father Gomez discovered a source of fresh water. He named it San Pantaleón. Later explorers called it the Aguage de Padre Gomez (“Spring of Father Gomez”), but those who followed 100 years later renamed it Tomato Springs, for the wild tomatoes that surrounded it. This former Portolá campground, now a part of the Irvine Ranch, has recently been given another name by developers: Portola Springs. Whatever the name, the expedition’s diarist said they pitched camp near a dry lagoon on a slope, from which they “could not see the end of a spacious plain.” Tomato Springs still flows on the outskirts of Irvine. 

After they crossed that spacious plain on the following day, they settled for the night near a stream that is still called Santiago Creek, close to the modern city of Orange. According to Father Crespi’s diary, the Spaniards considered this a spot suitable for a city. However, their goal lay elsewhere, so the party skirted the hills to the north, reaching the Santa Ana River on July 28. There they pitched camp on the east bank of the river due east of today’s Anaheim, opposite an Indian village, probably the Tongva.  

They needed to cross the swiftly moving river, and the next day, July 29, did so with much difficulty. Once safely across, the party traveled northwest until, again reporting from Father Crespi’s diary, they reached “a very green little valley, which has a small pool of water, on whose banks there is a very large village of very friendly heathen.” They set up camp on a hill near the pool of water and named the spot Santa Marta, a name that has not survived in California annals. The location of this camp was in modern day Fullerton.

Descending the hill on July 30, 1769, the little band proceeded north across the valley and over the Puente Hills, coming into a spacious and fertile valley through which a river flowed southward. In two years’ time the padres would build a mission here—originally in the Whittier Narrows—and name it Mission San Gabriel Arcangel. Both the river and the San Gabriel Valley were afterward named for the mission.

On August 2 the party traveled west out of San Gabriel, through the hills to another river, the site of the future pueblo of Los Angeles. From there they continued moving northwest along a route that became known as The El Camino Real. They did not rediscover Monterey in 1769. They saw it on October 1, but could not reconcile what they saw with the grand scale Vizcaino had described, more than a century past.    

The later main route, which came from Whittier to La Habra, and then through the hills where Harbor Boulevard runs today through the counties of Orange and Los Angeles, was opened by the Portolá expedition on their return trips in January and April 1770.