This
memorandum can be read in Croatian, courtesy of Andrijana Savicević, at
https://www.bildelerekspert.co.no/tips/2017/06/24/memorandum/,
[At the time the memo below was written, the author
understood that the entire Anza expedition, including walking women and
children, had travelled to what became San Francisco. However, the pedestrians
were actually left in Monterey, California, and just men on horses made the
trip northward, which explains how they got there so fast.]
MEMORANDUM
2010 May 3
To: City Council, Town of Los Altos Hills
From: Les
Earnest, Secretary, History Committee
Subject:
Recommend removal of erroneous historical monuments
On 4/20/2010 the History Committee
adopted the following resolution.
The
History Committee asks that the Council have the erroneous monuments on Town
property on Fremont Road at the intersections with Edith and Miranda Roads
removed.
The
following considerations led to this recommendation. An expedition led by Juan
Bautista de Anza brought the first substantial number of European and Mexican
settlers into Northern California in 1776, including many small children. This
event is certainly worthy of recognition but it should be done accurately.
Anyone
writing a historical account is entitled to provide a personal perspective that
emphasizes the role of an entity they represent or even their personal
involvement. However fabricating history so as to draw such attention is unacceptable. The case under
consideration is doubly embarrassing inasmuch as the Town government evidently
was drawn into the deception and induced to spend a considerable sum to
construct and install erroneous historical monuments. It constitutes a notable
failure of the historical review process and steps should be taken to ensure
that this kind of distortion is not repeated.
A
monument on the corner of Edith Park (Edith & Fremont Roads) says that Juan
Bautista de Anza "LED AN EXPEDITION NEAR THIS SITE, THE MISSION BEING TO
COLONIZE THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA" as shown below.
The plaque on the northeast
corner of Fremont and Miranda Roads says that the Anza party "CROSSED THIS
AREA IN MARCH 1776 EN ROUTE TO SELECT SITES FOR THE PRESIDIO AND THE MISSION OF
SAN FRANCISCO."
The above monuments apparently were
installed around 1976, at the time of the Bicentennial celebrations. Taken
together they claim that the Anza expedition went through this segment of
Fremont Road on their way north to what became San Francisco. This is confirmed
by the second paragraph of the Town History web page at http://www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/about-lah/town-history
which says, “Following roughly the path of today's Fremont Road, Juan Bautista
De Anza passed through what was to become Los Altos Hills while making his
journey from Monterey to San Francisco in 1776 to establish the Presidio.”
However it seems odd that the Anza expedition
would go into the hills along this route when there was (and is) a relatively
flat route going up the Peninsula nearer to the bay. The foothills were covered
with scrub brush that was difficult to ride through (manzanita, scrub
oak, poison oak, toyon, etc.) whereas the flatlands were relatively easy going.
Note that there were about 200 people in the Anza party and over half of them
were children age 12 and under. Let us examine the validity of the above
claims.
The diaries of both Juan Bautista
de Anza and his accompanying priest, Pedro Font, can be seen in both Spanish
and English at http://anza.uoregon.edu/archives.html
and Font’s diary is generally the more detailed of the two. Their passage through
this area was on March 26, 1776 and Font's entry for that day begins:
Tuesday,
March 26.—I said Mass. We set out from the arroyo of
San Joseph Cupertino at half past seven in the morning, and at a quarter to
four in the afternoon halted at a small and nearly dry arroyo about a short
league beyond the arroyo of San Matheo, having
traveled some twelve leagues, one to the northwest, another to the
north-northwest, then some four to the west-northwest until we crossed the
arroyo of San Francisco, and afterward three to the northwest by west and three
to the west-northwest. —Twelve leagues.
Given that a league is 3.45 miles, twelve leagues is just over 41 miles, which
is a pretty impressive day’s journey. In order to do that their route must have
been almost entirely along cleared trails in the flatlands.
Font's diary continues:
On leaving
camp, from the top of a hill we had in sight a large part of the southeastern
estuary of the port, on whose margins are seen several small inlets and a large
stretch of bad, muddy, and salty land this side of the water; but it appears
that the estuary extends at times through all that margin and flat. Then we
crossed an arroyo called Los Laureles because it had
many laurels; and a little afterward, on entering the Bosque Espinoso, we came to an arroyo or ditch with much water in
pools, where we stopped for quite a while to find a ford across it. I may note
that all the arroyos which are encountered between the valley of San Bernardino
and the port rise in the spruce-covered sierra on the south, of which I spoke
day before yesterday, and run toward the flat and the estuary.
It makes sense that they would
start out by going to a high point to plan a route going up the peninsula.
Given that the "arroyo of San Joseph Cupertino" was what we now call
Stevens Creek and that they apparently had camped in what we now call
Cupertino, their first leg of one league to the northwest (3.45 miles), as
reported in the first paragraph, would have taken them approximately to the
knoll just north of where northbound I-280 now enters the hills. On the
National Park Service map at http://www.solideas.com/DeAnza/TrailGuide/Santa_Clara/index.html,
shown on the next page, this Historic Site is labeled as "Cupertino
Knoll."
After that Font says they traveled "another [league] to the
north-northwest," which would have been approximately parallel to Stevens
Creek. They then went "some four [leagues] to the west-northwest until we
crossed the arroyo of San Francisco." The "arroyo of San
Francisco," is now called "San Francisquito
Creek." On that basis their route was approximately along the white band
shown in the map on the next page, i.e. the current route of El Camino Real.
Further on Font says:
Afterward
we reached the arroyo of San Francisco, on whose banks we saw a village. The
Indians came out to us on the road, and the commander went with me to the
village and gave the women some glass beads, and I counted about twenty-five
huts. We crossed the arroyo and found the holy cross which Father Palóu set up on its bank last year. On the arroyo there are
various laurels, ash, and other trees, and a few spruce trees which they call
redwood, a tree that is certainly beautiful; and I believe that it is very
useful for its timber, for it is very straight and tall, as I shall show later
on.
That cross reportedly was put near
the tall redwood tree called El Palo Alto, which was (and still is) on the
banks of San Francisquito Creek, so the white route
shown on the map on the next page looks accurate and does not go into the hills
after the initial overlook.
There is a consensus among
historians, based on the Font diary, that this was where the Anza party went.
You can get a more complete view of the Anza route, evidently based on the same
interpretations, by starting up Google Earth and typing "Anza Trail"
in the search field. This shows the whole Anza route and allows you to zoom in
on any segment. That representation indicates that their route came no closer
than about three miles from any part of Los Altos Hills.
However, Florence Fava in her book on "Los Altos Hills, the colorful
story" [Gilbert Richards Publications, Woodside, CA, 1976] says on page 8:
The Santa
Clara County Bicentennial Committee and the California History Center at De
Anza College, Cupertino, concur that the party traveled March 26 from Monte
Vista past the present site of St. Joseph's Seminary and Maryknoll
Seminary to a point near Freeway #280 at Mora Drive (an unincorporated County
area); dropped down across the Los Altos Golf and Country Club property to
Magdalena Avenue and Gronwell Court; and next roughly
followed the Foothill Expressway to Edith Avenue in downtown Los Altos. From
there it traversed Los Altos Hills via Fremont and Arastradero Roads, exiting
the Hills at Page Mill Road and the Freeway #280 overpass.
The route described by Fava is not consistent with
Font's diary and makes no sense at all. Why would the Anza party choose to go
through the hills when they could see a route through the flatlands? More
specifically, why would they go along the modern route of Fremont Road, then
take a left turn where it reaches Arastradero Road so that they could then
climb over part of Saddle Mountain to reach the I-280/Page Mill Road overpass
area, then turn right so as to come out of the mountains just a couple of miles
from where they entered?
The author gives no citation as a basis of the above claim nor does she
identify who made up the two organizations that supposedly agreed on those
claims. I would guess that she was a participant in both and probably
formulated the above claims. Fava goes on to say:
A
re-enactment of the 1776 Anza trek is destined to be a major feature of the
West's observance of the 1976 U.S. American Revolution Bicentennial.
This provides a strong clue to what gave rise to the implausible claims cited
above. It appears that in order to justify participation the the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, Fava fabricated the
claim that the Anza party came through Los Altos Hills in 1776. As official
Town Historian she then talked city officials into erecting monuments and went
on to organize a “reenactment” of this alleged event. Unfortunately her
claims were evidently fraudulent. It is too bad that nobody checked her story
at the time and that it was accepted uncritically in spite of the fact that it
made no sense.
A short time after getting the Town to erect the monuments, getting her book
published, and staging the “reenactment” of the Anza party’s alleged travel
through the Hills, Fava picked a public fight with the Los Altos Hills
Historical Society, resigned as Town Historian, and took many of the historical
artifacts and documents that had been collected and stored in the Town’s Heritage
House, claiming that they were her personal property. A bit later she moved out
of town.
It is unfortunate that the Town
government accepted Fava's claims uncritically and expended public funds on
erecting monuments confirming her fantasy. Those monuments now constitute an
ongoing public embarrassment and should be removed.