Anza Historic Marker on El Camino and Howard, Burlingame
Thursday, March 26, 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Anza encampment along Burlingame Creek, when Captain Juan Bautista Anza and a small group of men camped at a site near today’s Ralston and Occidental Avenues. The group was on their way north to scout an appropriate location for a presidio-fort and mission-church that would support a new Spanish community. The campsite is California Historic Landmark No. 48, as noted on a plaque at the corner of the Safeway parking lot at the intersection of El Camino Real and Howard Avenue. Burlingame has only two California Historic Landmarks—the train station and the Anza encampment.
Anza Expedition map, 1775-1776
Bay Area residents might be surprised to learn that people once had to be begged to relocate here. In 1775, the King of Spain commissioned Captain Juan Bautista Anza to recruit and lead a group of colonists who were willing to do so. Approximately 240 colonists signed on, most of them poor peasants from Culiacán, a city approximately 130 miles north of today’s Mazatlán. Their numbers included over 100 children and 8 pregnant women. Together with cowboys, muleteers, blacksmiths, cooks and soldiers the group totaled almost 300 people. After gathering at Tubac Presidio (north of modern-day Nogales, Arizona) they left on their journey in late October 1775. Some five months later, on March 10, 1776, they arrived at what was then Spain’s most northern presidio, Monterey, having traveled some 1,200 miles by horseback, mule and by foot. Despite enduring blazing-hot deserts, icy-cold snowstorms and one of California’s first recorded earthquakes, only one person died on the trail, the mother of a new-born baby boy who was born breech. She died from childbirth complications.
Anza Historic Marker on Arroyo Ct., San Mateo
Soon after arriving in Monterey, Captain Anza left with a small reconnaissance party to find a site near the SanFrancisco Bay for the new mission and presidio. On their way north, they spent the night of March 26 by Burlingame Creek, near today’s Heritage Park. On their return to Monterey after finding the sites that would become today’s San Francisco presidio and mission, the exploratory expedition camped on March 29 near San Mateo Creek (across from Mills Hospital). The men dined on the meat of a bear that night that was shot earlier in the day in the hills above the campsite.
In June, just one month before the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, Captain Anza’s second-in-command, Lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga, led the colonists up the Peninsula to found the City of San Francisco. The large group of immigrants camped and rested at San Mateo Creek for three nights (at the same location that the exploratory party had enjoyed three months earlier) before continuing their journey north. (California Historic Landmark No. 47)
The anniversary of the Anza expedition is a local kick-off for America’s 250th birthday. On Sunday, May 17, at 2 pm in the Burlingame library, the Burlingame Historical Society will feature a program on the Anza expedition and the establishment in 1990 of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. All are welcome.
