A California History Minute

Exactly 200 years ago yesterday, October 30, 1811, the first recorded expedition by boats to any part of the Sacramento River returned to the beach by the Presidio of San Francisco.  The exploring party consisted of about 68 persons in several boats, commanded by a rather unlikely admiral, Spanish Army sergeant, Jose Antonio Sanchez.  They had departed 15 days earlier and his log or diary is very detailed, but marred by a problem with estimating distances and a propensity to rename rivers and geographic features that he was unable to identify.  As an example, three years before, Moraga had found and named the Sacramento River, but Sanchez called it the San Francisco River.  This expedition did not go up the Sacramento above Rio Vista.

Only six years later (exploring interior California then, as now, was not a big thing in San Francisco), Governor Don Luis Antonio Arguello in his launch, San Rafael, departed from San Francisco on May 13, 1817.  He was accompanied by Fr. Narciso Duran of Mission San Jose and Fr. Jose Ramon Arbella of Mission San Francisco in their launch San Jose.  The river was flowing rapidly due to melting snow, and to keep the oarsmen cool they often traveled by night and stopped and rested during the hottest part of the day.  Fr. Duran kept a six page (12" x 4 1/2 ") diary and noted stops at approximately the sites of modern Collinsville, Rio Vista, Ryde, Steamboat Slough, Hood (on May 18, when they passed the site of Sacramento City), The Sacramento Weir, (May 19) and on May 20, their highest point, 2 miles above the bridge by Sacramento International Airport, where they cut across in an oak tree.  From there, Fr. Duran could see Sierra Summits and commented:  

“Once the pass in the Sierra is discovered…we would be able to ascertain the truth of what the Indians have told us for some years past, that on the other side of the Sierra Nevada there are people like our soldiers. We have never been able to…know whether they are Spanish from New Mexico or English from the Columbia or Russians from Bodega (bay)”.

That afternoon the two boats turned back and at dawn on May 26, 1817 reached the beach at the Presidio of San Francisco.

Father Narciso Duran was born December 16, 1776 in Castellon de Ampurias, Spain, came to Mexico as a priest in 1803 and to California in 1806.  He was praised by his superiors as a most zealous and efficient missionary.  He died June 1, 1846, 37 days before the flag of the United States was raised at Monterey.