Santa Clara County, California




 
Historic and Interpretive Sites
Uvas Creek Park Preserve: This regional park in the City of Gilroy encompasses an area through which the expedition passed. The park plans include an interpretive stop for the Anza Trail as well as interpretation of the natural and cultural history of the area.

Chitactac–Adams Heritage County Park: Near Uvas Creek at the intersection of Burchell Road and Watsonville Road, this park commemorates an Ohlone village. Chitactac is the name of the principal village of the Amah tribe near Gilroy. Anza expedition journals were used to identify the location.

Expedition Camp #92: The site of the March 24, 1776 encampment is located in Silvera Park along Llagas Creek near Watsonville Road and Santa Teresa Boulevard. As yet undeveloped, the park is the site of one of the reenactment plaques.

Rancho Santa Teresa Historic District/Santa Teresa County Park: Bernal Adobe Site, Santa Teresa Spring and Shrine, Bernal-Joice Ranch: Anza poblador (expedition member), José Joaquín Bernal passed through this site in 1776 as the Anza group headed for San Francisco Bay. He returned in 1826 to establish Rancho Santa Teresa and construct four to six adobes. Among other resources, the site contains a Muwekma Ohlone burial ground, the Bernal Adobe site, Bear Tree, and Santa Teresa Spring. The site is registered with the state as a certified archeological site #SCL-125.

Expedition Camp #93: Font notes the camp on March 25, 1776, at arroyo of San Joseph Cupertino. The plaque for CRHL No. 800 is located at Monte Vista High School, west parking lot, 21840 McClellan Road, Cupertino. Several members of the volunteer Anza Trail county task force support the location of the actual campsite along Calabasas Creek in the vicinity of what is now DeAnza Boulevard and Prospect Road.

McClellan Ranch Park/Stevens Creek: Located at 22221 McClellan Road, this park is within the historic corridor. Plans are underway to restore the Stevens Creek riparian corridor with native plants as it may have been in 1776. A reenactment marker exists at the site.

Rancho San Antonio County Park: Located on Cristo Rey Drive in Cupertino, a portion of this park encompasses the historic trail corridor. It was from a prominent knoll near the entry of this park that both Font and Anza said they could see San Francisco Bay. The knoll was recently dedicated as permanent public open space by the Diocese of San José . Stevens Creek Trail is recognized in the City of Cupertino General Plan as having significance relating the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.

El Camino Real: Commemorated as the road between the missions, this road is the route of the Anza expedition from El Monte Street in Mountain View to El Palo Alto (see below).

El Palo Alto: This "tall tree," a redwood measured by Father Font, is located at the intersection of Alma Street and El Camino Real in Palo Alto. Portolá had camped here on November 6, 1769.

Greer House: Mrs. John Greer was a granddaughter of Ignacio Soto of the Anza expeditions and the daughter of Rafael Soto, grantee of Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito. The house is located at 1517 Louisa Court, Palo Alto.

Rafael Soto Home Site: Rafael Soto, son of Ygnacio Soto, a member of the Anza expedition, built a home on this site in the early 1840s on his Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito. It is located on the east side of Middlefield Road just north of Oregon Avenue in Palo Alto. 

Middlefield Crossing: This crossing of San Francisquito Creek prior to the 1850s is located on Middlefield Road at San Francisquito Creek.

Expedition Camp # 97: On March 30, 1776, Anza camped on the Guadalupe River near the present–day site of Agnews State Hospital.

Mission Santa Clara de Asís: The mission is located on the grounds of the Santa Clara University, the Alameda, Santa Clara. Established in 1777 near the Guadalupe River, it was relocated in 1782 after several floods, abandoned after the earthquake of 1822, and again relocated to the present site. Trail interpretation should include all the sites. Ignacio Alviso, an Anza expedition member (aged three in 1775), was majordomo after secularization. The site is within the Muwekma–Ohlone traditional territory.

Mission Santa Clara de Asís: The mission is located on the grounds of the Santa Clara University, the Alameda, Santa Clara. Established in 1777 near the Guadalupe River, it was relocated in 1782 after several floods, abandoned after the earthquake of 1822, and again relocated to the present site. Trail interpretation should include all the sites. Ignacio Alviso, an Anza expedition member (aged three in 1775), was majordomo after secularization. The site is within the Muwekma–Ohlone traditional territory.

North of the University grounds is the Pena Adobe at 3260 The Alameda, Santa Clara. Dating from the 1780s, it is one of the oldest structures in the valley and was constructed as quarters for married Indians at the Mission Santa Clara. it is the sole survivor of the third mission compound dedicated in 1784. (CRHL No. 249)

Fernando Berreyesa Adobe: Fernando’s father, José Reyes Berreyesa, had been a soldier at San Francisco Presidio where his father, Nicolas, came as a boy with Anza’s party. This privately owned adobe is located at 373 Jefferson Street, Santa Clara. 

First Site of El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe: This State Landmark Monument on the city’s Civic Center grounds, recognizes the first site of the Pueblo which was named for the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Anza Expedition of 1775–76. Lt. Jose Moraga arrived in the Santa Clara Valley with 14 settlers and their families on November 29, 1777 to found this first civil settlement of California. The monument is located at 801 North First Street, San José.

Luis Maria Peralta Adobe: This pre–1800 adobe, one of the first houses in the second plaza of the Pueblo of San José , is believed to be built by José Manuel Gonzales, an Apache who accompanied the Anza party. Luis Maria Peralta, also with his parents on the Anza trip, became comisionado (Commissioner) [1807–1822] and lived at the adobe until he died in 1851. City Landmark No. 1, located at 184 St.John Street in San José, is open for docent tours only. The gardens and exterior are open to the public during regular park hours. It is a certified site along the Anza Trail.

Plaza de Caesar Chavez, formerly Plaza Park: The Plaza is circled by South Market Street between San Fernando and San Carlos Streets in downtown San José . Around 1797, the pobladores (settlers) moved to higher ground to avoid the flooding Rió de Guadalupe. They built adobes, gardens, and water channels around a central plaza, which remain today as Plaza Park. It was, and still is, the geographic center of San José . It was also the political center of norte California, with its juzgado (court, city hall, and jail). Many of the Anza party that retired from military service moved to San José to be with their families and become ranchers. The earliest maps of San José show this plaza ringed with a "who’s who" of Anza settlers.

Saint Joseph Cathedral: This is the first non–mission church in California and San José ’s oldest place of continual worship. San José ’s earliest residents grew weary of traveling to Mission Santa Clara for services, so they built their own church. Built by pueblo residents in 1803, the first Saint Joseph church was a simple adobe structure. Most of the contributors were from the Anza trek of 1776. The present cathedral is the fourth Saint Joseph Church on this site, following fires and earthquakes over the years. It is located at 90 South Market Street at San Fernando, San José.

Mountain View Shoreline Park: This city park is at the margin of San Francisco Bay, within the historic corridor, and offers views similar to those the expedition members would have seen.

Sunnyvale Baylands County Park: Trails within this park offer experiences of the natural environment similar to those of 1776.

José Maria Alviso Adobe: This adobe was built in the 1830s or 1840s by the son of Anza colonist Francisco Xavier Alviso and is located on Piedmont Road in Milpitas.

Higuera Adobe: This structure was built in the mid–1800s by Joseph Loreto Higuera, son of Anza colonists Ygnacio Anastacio Higuera and María Micaela Bojórquez who were married at San Xavier del Bac during the expedition. It is located near Calero Creek in Milpitas.

Expedition Camp # 103: This April 5, 1776, camp is located at the southern edge of San Antonio Valley overlooking the watersheds of the East Fork of Coyote Creek and Sulphur Springs near the northern boundary of Henry W. Coe State Park. It is privately owned.

Henry W. Coe State Park: East of Highway 101 at Morgan Hill, this 80,000+ acre park contains about 15 miles of the historic route, a mid–day stop at Los Cruceros, and a landscape which can still be recognized from the expedition journals. The Los Cruceros stop has a reenactment plaque.

Gilroy Hot Springs: This privately owned site is within the trail corridor.

Expedition Camp #104: The April 6, 1776 camp is located at the confluence of Coyote Creek and Cañada de los Osos, south of Gilroy Hot Springs and near the county fire department facility at Roop and Cañada Roads, east of Gilroy.