Introduction
This section of the final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail provides background information which may be of interest to agencies and individuals along the route. It addresses the general concept and management philosophy for the trail. The impact analysis section of the FEIS is available from the National Park Service.

The environmental issues determined relevent to this plan are historic and cultural resources along the route, ethnography, natural resources relating to threatened and endangered species, and socioeconomic factors including land ownership, land use, and visitor use. These issues were selected for analysis because this federal action has potential to affect them directly, and they have been issues or concerns with the public during the planning process.

Cultural Environment

Cultural Resources
Historic Sites. Little historic fabric remains from 1775-76. Even the missions which Anza visited have changed, for they were temporary structures at the time of his visits. Missions and presidios related to the Anza trek as they exist today are identified as historic resources for this trail. A total of 35 historic sites, eight in Arizona and 27 in California, have been identified as significant to the trail. These sites include missions, presidios, landmarks, river crossings, campsites, water sources, and beaches. The majority are national register sites or national historic landmarks, and all have a direct connection with the 1775-76 trek.

Table 7 shows that 12 of these sites are on federal land, 11 on state land, five on local public agency land, and seven on private land. The private sites are all missions or chapels. The local agency sites are county beaches along the Santa Barbara Channel. In addition, 102 interpretive sites, 13 in Arizona and 89 in California, have been identified. These sites have high potential to offer interpretation of the history of the Anza trek, the American Indian territories he traveled through, and related Spanish colonial history. These historic and interpretive sites are listed and briefly described in appendix B.

TABLE 7: LOCATION AND OWNERSHIP OF HISTORIC SITES
 

Ownership	AZ	CA	Total
Federal
BLM	2	3	5
BOR	1		1
NPS	2	2	4
USFS		2	2
State	2	9	11
Local Agency		5	5
Private	1	6	7
Total	8	27	35

Cultural and Archeological Sites. Over half of the historic route has become paved road-ways. Other parts of the route are affected by railroad and urban developments. Some areas are protected due to land use patterns or ownership. Archeological evidence of the American Indian cultures Anza encountered or of the Spanish colonial period may remain along most of the route in Arizona, particularly between Tucson and Yuma. Such evidence may still remain in the deserts of California, the California coast from Gaviota to Guadalupe, Fort Hunter Liggett and Camp Roberts in Monterey County , and at other sites along the route. In addition, archeological remains of the mission structures and others from the 1775–76 period may exist.

Mission San Antonio de Padua, a national register site, recognizes the Anza expedition visit of 1776  with an entry sign.

Some archeological sites have been identified on federal lands along the route. In Arizona, the BLM has identified many fragile resources within its 3,620 acre Gila River Cultural Area, an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) established to protect prehistoric and historic remains of human use spanning nearly 8,000 years. The Anza route cuts through this ACEC. In California, an expedition campsite is located within the 6,320 acre San Sebastian Marsh/San Felipe Creek ACEC, managed by BLM for its cultural and wildlife values. Recent investigations at Golden Gate National Recreation Area confirm that archeological remains of the Spanish-era Presidio of San Francisco exist. Other state and federal agencies have identified sites in Anza–Borrego Desert State Park, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Camp Roberts, Fort Hunter Liggett, and Fort Ord.

Other sites have been identified on land managed by state or local, agencies or on private land along the route as a result of surveys required for development or for other reasons. Well-protected sites which are accessible to the public are included as historic or interpretive sites for the Anza Trail and are described in appendix B.

Landscapes. Because the Anza expeditions took place early in the Spanish colonization of the Gila River area and of Alta California, there is an absence of built historic fabric. This absence is offset by the integrity of the trail route’s natural landscape which remains in-tact in parts of Arizona and California.

In most cases, the historic landscape has changed since 1775, either from the effects of natural plant growth and succession, from grazing and farming, from urbanization, or from changing transportation systems. In spite of these changes, landscape features corresponding to the expedition journals can be found in nearly every county. These features include mountain peaks in Arizona; the “fairly large cave with a partition” in San Benito County; the “strips and pieces of very white gravel” in San Antonio Valley of Santa Clara County; the “narrow and very deep canyon of the Arroyo del Coyote” of Santa Clara County (quotes from Bolton’s translation of Font’s diary); and larger landscapes such the desert washes in California, the views of the Channel Islands from the mainland, views of the entrance of San Francisco Bay, views to San Francisco Bay from the foothills of Alameda County, and the rivers, low hills, and valleys described in specific ways along the entire route.

Some of the landscape areas within the historic corridor have been inventoried or analyzed for their significance. A portion of the Anza route passes through the North Maricopa Wilderness in the Lower Gila Resource Area of the Phoenix District of the BLM in Arizona. The management plan for the area proposes conversion of a 5.6 mile jeep trail to a primitive hiking and equestrian trail within the wilderness. This trail might be marked as the Anza Trail as well as the Butterfield Overland Mail Route. Three landscape areas within the Anza Trail corridor are on the National Register of Historic Places. These are Sears Point Archeological District in Yuma County, Yuha Basin Discontiguous District in Imperial County, and the Fages-De Anza Trail-Southern Emigrant Road in San Diego County. In addition, San Felipe Creek in Imperial County and Nipomo Dunes in San Luis Obispo County are recognized as a National Natural Landmarks.

Arizona and California Indians. For the entire 1200 miles of his expedition in what is the United States today, Anza traveled through American Indian lands. The map on the following page illustrates the tribal territories through which the expedition traveled. These territories represent an abstraction since the native tribes did not consider themselves to be a single people. Most of these territorial names represent Spanish names. For instance, the name "Gabrielino" was given to the group served by the Mission San Gabriel; the name "Costanoan" is taken from the Spanish word costeño, or "coast dweller." Today, the Gabrielino groups call themselves "Tongva." In the San Francisco Bay area, two Costanoan tribes exist that refer to themselves as the Ohlone and the Muwekma-Ohlone (Russell Skowronek, Letter #49). San Juan Bautista area Costanoans are the Amah-Mutsun, and the Monterey area Costanoans are the Costanoan/Ohlone-Esselen Nation. As a further refinement, the latter group is comprised of intermarried lineages of five or six Monterey area tribes (Alan Leventhal, San Jose State, personal conversation, 8/1/94),

Anza and his colonists visited village sites and passed through the lands of smaller groups. In Arizona today, they passed through the lands of peoples the Spanish called the Pimas, Gileños, Opas, Cocomaricopas, and the Yumas. Along the Santa Barbara Channel, the expedition diaries mention nineteen villages. In the San Francisco Bay area, Anza passed through at least ten separate tribal territories (Milliken, 1991), all of which are represented on the map as the Costanoan/Ohlone territory.

The location of villages and the use of the land grew out of economic activities that followed the natural availability and distribution of food and raw materials. Similarly, religious beliefs related to the particular characteristics of the natural environment. Generally, the societies of these peoples emphasized a spiritual relationship with the natural environment, but the relationship was not passive. Their economies were based on management of the environments in which they lived and on distribution through exchange systems among their own villages, towns, or rancherias or with distant groups.

In my former diary I noted the vast fields which were cultivated in these pueblos of the Pimas. At present they are not planted as they ought to be because the river is so short of water...the Indians tell me the drought will last only till the middle of this month [November], when they will commence their planting.

The native peoples along the Santa Cruz River in Arizona "were settled in villages and engaged in an agricultural way of life. They also continued to supplement their diet by gathering wild food materials. They had learned to blend the resources of the native desert together with the products of irrigated farming to the extent that they could trade in food and other products with other indigenous peoples and could also supply the Spanish. By the time the Spanish arrived in the area, there was already a long heritage of human settlement, travel along well-explored routes, and enough interaction between various groups that they could provide translators for the Spanish." (Pima County Task Force Report, Aug. 1993)

In contrast, the Chumash economy along the Santa Barbara Channel was based on ocean resources such as fish, shell fish, and sea mammals and on land animals, acorns, grass seeds, and root crops. The mainland Chumash traded with the island Chumash for shell beads, stone tools, and other goods. The Gabrielino had seacoast villages based on marine economies and inland villages based on hunting and gathering. "Far from being passive hunters and gatherers, the Indians of California managed the landscape on a grand scale. By burning the land regularly, by the coppicing of basketry plants, by regulating the fishing and hunting resources, Indians altered the California landscape profoundly." (Margolin, editor's note) There is abundant documentation of American Indian associations with the land prepared by native and nonnative scholars.

The natural and cultural resources along the route continue to have significance to contemporary groups of traditional users. Some tribes along the route have a land base today. The trail passes through the Tohono O'odham districts of San Xavier and San Lucy, the Gila River Indian Reservation (Akimel O'odham), and the Cahuilla Indian Reservation in California. In addition, the Quechan have a landbase at the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation and the Chumash in Santa Ynez. Most mission-influenced Indians of California, from San Gabriel to San Francisco, do not have a common landbase, but have a strong interest in recognizing their heritage, telling the story of their survival, and acknowledging their culture.

Many sites and landscapes along the Anza Trail may have significance to contemporary descendants of the peoples the expedition encountered. For instance, mission lands are important to native peoples. However, sites important to American Indians may not be recognized by the dominant culture. Most have a belief system which involves a responsibility for stewardship of ancestral sites and safeguarding the peace of the ancestral dead. As development has occurred within their traditional land areas, cemetery and village sites are unearthed which they want to protect.
 

Petroglyphs along the trail in Arizona

The Anza trail passes through very sensitive sites, such as Pilot Knob in Imperial County, which is sacred to the Quechan, and Sears Point Archeological Area and Antelope Hill in Yuma County, which are important to the Quechan and other groups. Several publicly known sites are included as interpretive sites in the Proposal: Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center; Oakbrook Park Chumash Interpretive Center, Bernal Adobe Site (contains a Muwekma-Ohlone burial ground), Chitactac-Adams Heritage County Park (commemorates an Amah-Mutsun Ohlone village), and Coyote Hills Regional Park which interprets the Muwekma-Ohlone and Ohlone culture. As the Anza Trail is implemented, other sites which are important to traditional users may be identified.