Trailing Anza.

• Author: Alden, Jan M.
• Position: Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail

Against the dark highway sign, four figures emerge from a stylized, white triangle. An American Indian strides beside a Spanish horseman. At a distance, ride a priest and a woman holding a child. Around the perimeter of the triangle, the words "Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail" alert travelers that they are foe lowing historic footsteps--some twelve hundred miles, in fact, between Nogales, Arizona, and San Francisco, California.

In 1774, after two centuries of unsuccessful attempts by Spain to find an overland route between Mexico and California, Anza succeeded. A year later, as revolutionary fever swept New England, he led some 240 soldiers and civilians, half of whom were children, across the desert and up the Pacific Coast. Their numbers would double the Spanish population of California.

Their destiny was to found the city of San Francisco; at stake was Spain's claim, in the face of British and Russian encroachment, to the vast, still-unknown West. Anza's accomplishments were to Spain in the Southwest what the Lewis and Clark expedition and subsequent Oregon Trail were to the United States in the Northwest. But Spain's day as a colonial power was fading. Within seventy-five years, Spain would lose Mexico; Mexico would lose the Southwest; and a gold rush would flood California with easterners.

The irony of Anza's precedent-setting trek was that, in proving his trail viable for women and children, he opened the door not only to hundreds of emigrants from Mexico but also eventually to thousands from the Mississippi River Valley and beyond.

Anza's achievement, however, slipped into obscurity and undoubtedly would have remained there except for the passionate interest of a few individuals. Among them was George Cardinet of the Heritage Trails Fund.

"George is the grandfather of the trail," says Jeannie Gillen, Southern California chair of Amigos de Anza. "If it weren't for his advocacy, the trail wouldn't have happened."

In late 1975, two hundred years to the day and in conjunction with U.S. bicentennial celebrations, Cardinet staged a reenactment of Anza's expedition. Based on diary accounts, the twentieth-century trek was faithful, whenever possible, to the place, hour, and events of the original.

In 1990 Congress designated the Juan...