San Diego Historical Society
A historic medallion depicting Gaspar de Portola
In late October of 1769, Captain Gaspar de Portola and his party of sixty men (with a caravan of 200 horses and mules for riding and the pack train) had come from San Diego in search of Monterey Bay, but from their overland approach, they had failed to recognize it. They had come north, climbed over San Pedro Mountain and had made camp in Pedro Valley, now in the city of Pacifica. Though already within today’s Bay Area, they were still unaware of the Bay’s existence.
On November 1, 1769, Sergeant Ortega with a squad of scouts began a three-day reconnoitering tour. Somewhere along the five mile stretch between Mussel Rock and the summit (Point Reyes), Ortega saw San Francisco Bay on his first day of scouting. When Ortega returned to camp on November 3, Portola’s next move was an attempt to go around this new found “estuary” to examine the vicinity of Point Reyes. From the camp on San Pedro Creek, Captain Portola and his men followed the beach to the north, then entered the hills and from the summit beheld the great estuary.
Three days of slow travel brought the expedition to the site of modern Palo Alto where a new base camp was made to await Ortega’s probing of the east side of the estuary. Ortega returned in four days with discouraging news. He encountered aggressively hostile Indians and observed great stretches of burned-over land leaving no pasture for the expedition’s livestock. A council was then called and the decision was made to return to San Diego.
The Portola Expedition ultimately accomplished its purpose of finding Monterey Bay. The San Francisco region was further explored by Lieutenant Pedro Pagas in 1772 and by Juan Bautista de Anza in 1776. The importance of the inland bay was further emphasized by the establishment of a presidio and two missions in the environs of the bay.
