"¡Vayan Subiendo!"("Everyone mount up!") was the rousing call from Juan Bautista de Anza. Today, the 1,200-mile Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail connects history, culture, and outdoor recreation from Nogales, Arizona to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Juan Bautista de Anza leading an exploratory expedition on January 8, 1774, with 3 padres, 20 soldiers, 11 servants, 35 mules, 65 cattle, and 140 horses set forth from Tubac Presidio, south of present-day Tucson, Arizona. They went across the Sonoran desert to California from Mexico by swinging south of the Gila River to avoid Apache attacks until they hit the Colorado River at the Yuma Crossing—about the only way across the Colorado River. The friendly Quechan (Yuma) Indians (2-3,000) they encountered there were growing most of their food using irrigation systems and had already imported pottery, horses, wheat and a few other crops from New Mexico.
The Pueblo de Los Angeles would be established in 1781 by eleven families recruited mostly from Sonora y Sinaloa Province. It took Anza about 74 days to do this initial reconnaissance trip to establish a land route into California. On his return trip he retraced his path to the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River and then went down the Gila River corridor until hitting the Santa Cruz River (Arizona) corridor and continuing on to Tubac, Arizona. The return trip only took 23 days as he now had found a trail with sufficient water to make land access to California possible. On the Gila river he encountered several extensive villages of Pima (Akimel O'odham) Indians. These were a peaceful and populous agricultural tribe with extensive crops and irrigation systems located along the Gila River.
Along the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail route, visitors can experience the varied landscapes similar to those the expedition saw; learn the stories of the expedition's events, members, and descendants; better understand the Native American diversity of cultures in their homelands and their guidance on the expedition; and appreciate the extent and lasting influences of Spanish colonial settlements in present-day Arizona and California. The Trail was designated a National Historic Trail in 1990 and a National Millennium Trail in 1999.
In 2005, Caltrans began posting signs on roads that overlap with the trail route, so that California drivers can now follow the trail. Cut and paste this URL for an extensive brochure mapping out the trail:
https://www.nps.gov/juba/planyourvisit/upload/Anza-Trail_Brochure-driving-map.pdf
References: https://www.nps.gov/juba/index.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Bautista_de_Anza_National_Historic_Trail