"It is a very large and fine harbor, such that not only all the navy of our most Catholic Majesty but those of all Europe could take shelter in it."
— Crespí, upon seeing a glimpse of San Francisco Bay.
When Fray Juan Crespí wrote those words, he had no way of knowing how prophetic they would prove to be. He had no way of seeing what the future would bring—the great city that would one day rise along its shores, the bridge that would one day span the strait. But at that moment, atop the windswept bluffs overlooking San Francisco Bay, he knew one thing with certainty: they had seen something extraordinary.
It was not what they had set out to find. They had been searching for Monterey, the long-lost port described by Sebastián Vizcaíno nearly 170 years before. They had overshot it entirely. The maps they carried were useless, their supplies were dwindling, and the men were near the breaking point. The journey had become a test of endurance, faith, and willpower. And yet, against all odds, they had stumbled upon something greater than what they had sought—seeking Monterey Bay, they found the Golden Gate to the West, San Francisco.
From the moment they left the dusty outpost of Velicatá, they had been marching toward the unknown, into a land that no European had seen, armed with little more than blind faith and dogged determination. And Crespí—Franciscan friar, humble chronicler, tireless traveler—had been there every step of the way, recording it all. Juan Crespí was not a soldier. He carried no musket, no saber, no shield. He had none of the trappings of conquest. But in his own way, he was just as much a pioneer as the men who rode beside him.
The Origins of Juan Crespí
Born in Mallorca in 1721, Crespí entered the Franciscan order as a young man, studying at the monastery in Palma alongside Junípero Serra. Serra helped shape him and set him on the path that would take him to the edge of the known world. Where Serra was fiery, full of boundless energy and insatiable ambition, Crespí was quiet, methodical, and precise. Serra was the driving force; Crespí was the recorder. The two of them, along with Francisco Palóu, had been inseparable since their student days. They had crossed the Atlantic together. They had walked the mountains of the Sierra Gorda together. They had labored together in the harsh, arid missions of Baja California. And when the time came to push northward into Alta California, Crespí had been among the first to volunteer.
The Sacred Expedition was Spain’s last great effort to secure Alta California before foreign rivals could. Russia, Britain, even France—the Spanish feared them all. If Spain did not establish a firm foothold, someone else would. And so José de Gálvez, the powerful Visitor-General of New Spain, had devised an ambitious plan: two ships, the San Carlos and San Antonio, would sail North. At the same time, two overland parties would march up the peninsula. Their goal was simple—establish a settlement at San Diego, then push to Monterey.
Crespí joined the second land party under Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada. His duty was to minister to the men, offer prayers and blessings along the way, and, above all, record everything.
To Alta California
On March 24, 1769, they set out into the Wilderness. The journey began in the barren reaches of the Baja California peninsula, where water was scarce and the land was rugged.
"Provisions for the journey, horses, mules, and cattle were assembled at Velicatá, a post eighteen leagues beyond Santa María, the northernmost of the old Jesuit missions. The first of the overland parties waved goodbye at Velicatá on March 24, 1769. It was led by Captain Rivera, commander of the company of Loreto. He had twenty-five leather-jacket soldiers (soldados de cuera), three muleteers, and some forty Indians from the old missions, equipped with pick, shovel, ax, and crowbar, to open the roads through the mountains and across arroyos. As chaplain and diarist went Father Juan Crespí, principal historian of the expedition."
The days stretched endlessly under the unrelenting sun.
"The way was difficult and long, but the hours were shortened by the joy of discovery. For the first eight days the trail was that followed by the Jesuit Father Linck three years before. Thereafter, for over two hundred and fifty miles, the route was now explored by white men for the first time."
Each day brought new challenges. Water was always in short supply; some nights, there was none. They rationed what they had, filling skin bags and barrels, but it was never enough.
"Several nights were made shivery by the screaming of a mountain lion. Much of the way was over rugged mountains. The wild Indians did no harm, but occasionally they were threatening. When the Spaniards reached the coast it rained, and the men spent uncomfortable nights in water-soaked clothing."
Before the expedition began, murmurs of fear surrounded the sea route. The Pacific had long been a treacherous domain for sailors, not because of storms or enemy vessels but because of something unseen—an invisible death that crept through the bodies of men and left them helpless: scurvy.
It was May 13, 1769. Fray Juan Crespí and the men of the Sacred Expedition had finally reached San Diego after months of grueling overland travel from the Baja Peninsula. The moment should have been triumphant, a joyful meeting between the land and sea contingents.
Instead, it was met with horror. The first signs of land came at sunrise when the scouts, weary from weeks of travel, caught sight of the bay where two ships lay anchored—San Carlos and San Antonio. There were mixed feelings, "welcome salutes and the fond embraces were offset by news of the horrible inroads made by scurvy."
The disease had claimed the lives of countless seamen before, and the Sacred Expedition was no exception. When Crespí and his companions arrived at San Diego, they found the once-proud San Carlos crew devastated. The sick lay strewn across the shore, their bodies wasted, their gums blackened, their breath shallow. Nearly all of the crew that had set sail from La Paz had succumbed. The survivors were hardly better off. They could neither walk nor stand. They had to be carried onto the land, one by one.
Crespí’s heart wrenched at the sight. He had seen illness before. He had seen the suffering of the poor in the Sierra Gorda mountain missions and comforted the sick and dying in the heat of New Spain’s deserts. But this was something else entirely and far more intense.
They found our brethren stretched out on the ground like the dead, unable to move, some beyond saving. Their voices were little more than whispers, their hands too weak to take even a sip of water. The air itself seemed to be thick with death. It was a grim reality. There was no cure, no immediate remedy. Citrus fruits—the one thing that helped save them—were spread thin in the Spanish provisions. Some of the original orange trees at Alta California's missions were brought with them from the missions in Baja. But at a certain point, the friars could offer only prayer and what little comfort they had.
Each evening, Crespí knelt beside the dying, whispering words of the Gospel. He made the sign of the cross over foreheads damp with fever and spoke of redemption and salvation. But no miracle came. They buried the dead in the sand. The crashing waves drowned out the friars' prayers and the cries of the living.
For Portolá and his men, the arrival at San Diego had been supposed to mark the beginning of Spanish settlement in Alta California. Instead, it was quickly becoming a graveyard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crespí, Juan. Diario del Viaje de la Expedición de Portolá. Translated by Herbert Eugene Bolton, Fray Juan Crespí: Missionary Explorer on the Pacific Coast, 1769-1774. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927.