On April 13, 1776, Spanish missionary and explorer Francisco Hermenegildo Tomás Garcés entered the Santa Clarita Valley while searching for a shorter inland route from Sonora, Mexico, to Monterey, California.

Father Francisco Hermenegildo Tomás Garcés was born on April 12, 1738, in north-central Spain.  He joined the Franciscan Order about 1758 and was ordained a priest in 1763 in Spain.

In 1768, Garcés left for New Spain (now Mexico). He was soon assigned to the San Xavier del Bac Mission in what would later be Tucson, Arizona. Inspired by the founder of this mission, Garcés took up the mantle of explorer in the southwest, leading several missionary and exploratory journeys through modern-day Arizona.

He explored the Gila and Colorado River Valleys, the Colorado River to the Gulf of California, the Grand Canyon, and traveled to visit the Hopi villages of the north, among his other missionary trips.

Garcés’ exploration of Arizona and the Colorado River led to future Spanish exploration of the West Coast. He accompanied military explorer Juan Bautista de Anza partway in both his large overland expeditions: the 1774 De Anza Expedition and the 1775-76 Anza Colonizing Expedition.

It was during the 1776 expedition that Garcés made his way to the Santa Clarita Valley. Alone, he travelled from the San Fernando Valley north to the Santa Clara River Valley, noting it to be a plain “with many tall and thick cottonwoods and oaks.”

Of the Santa Clara River Valley, Garcés wrote the following in his diary (translated from Spanish by later historians):

Apr. 13. I passed over a sierra that comes off from the Sierra Nevada and runs to the westnorth-west, and entered into the Valle de Santa Clara,  having gone two leagues on a north course; in the afternoon, having gone a league and a half northwest, I arrived at the Cienega de Santa Clara. One of the Jamajabs having been taken sick, I tarried in this place until the 23d day; during which time I visited various rancherias that there are in these sierras, as also the caxones and arroyos, with much water and most abundant grass, and from whose inhabitants I experienced particular meekness and affability. I baptized one infirm old man, the father of the chief of these rancherias, having instructed him by means of Sevastian, though with difficulty. There came other Indians from the north-northeast and promised to conduct me to their land, as also they did with five more Jamajabs who arrived these days to trade.

From there, he encountered members of the local Tataviam and the coastal Chumash. He continued traveling north up San Francisquito Canyon. Once in the Central Valley, Garcés crossed the Kern River and visited Tulare Lake, then followed the Tejon route established by Pedro Fages in 1772.

Garcés used the first Tejon Pass between the Mojave Desert over the Tehachapi Mountains to the future site of Bakersfield, California, 15 miles to the northeast of the current Tejon Pass.

Garcés was killed on July 19, 1781, alongside more than 100 others at La Purisima Concepción Mission in Yuma, California, when Yuma Indians revolted against Spanish incursion on their rights and lands. He and the other friars killed in Yuma are considered martyrs by the Catholic Church.

Several landmarks are named after Garcés in Bakersfield, including Garces Memorial High School and Garces Memorial Circle.

To read yesterday’s Today in SCV History, click here.