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Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic TrailHighway 238 in Maricopa County, also known as the Dead Cow Highway, linking Gila Bend and the town of Maricopa.
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Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail
Nature & Science
 

The most thorough current source of information on the Anza expedition can be found at the Web De Anza site. Use the maps found there to locate your area of interest, then contact a local park for more information.

The journals of Anza and Font describe the many environments the expedition passed through on the way to the San Francisco bay. These include the saguaro-filled Sonoran desert, the cottonwood/willow riparian habitat along desert rivers and streams, the cold mountain passes of the lower Sierra Mountains of California, and finally the moist and fertile grasslands of the central coastline of California.

Father Font used an astronomical quadrant on the trip to fix the group's location so that the trail could be mapped and followed by others.

 
The Anza Trail stretches 1200 miles from Nogales, Arizona to San Francisco, California  

Did You Know?
Franciscan Father Pedro Font wrote a journal during his 1775-6 trip on the Anza Trail. Suffering culture shock, his journals are a study in personal bigotry. However, by the time Font reached California he had grown more tolerant and wrote less insulting things about the tribes he met along the way.
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Last Updated: October 30, 2007 at 17:03 EST