San Pantaleon: Where the Portola Expedition Camped

On July twenty-sixth, seventeen sixty-nine, a column of Spanish soldiers, missionaries, and Indigenous guides halted near this hill and drew water from the springs here. They called the site San Pantaleon, or the Springs of Father Gomez, after the Franciscan priest who was one of the expedition's chaplains.

This was the Portola Expedition, the first overland European crossing of Alta California. Governor Gaspar de Portola led roughly seventy people north from Baja California with orders to reach Monterey Bay and establish a Spanish presence before rival powers could claim the coast. The group traveled on foot and on horseback through completely unmapped terrain.

The expedition would ultimately overshoot Monterey and stumble upon San Francisco Bay before turning back. The springs at San Pantaleon provided a critical water stop in what is now Orange County. Within a few decades the same corridor would carry the first missions and presidios that anchored Spanish California.