Anza TrailJuan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail
From Horcasitas to the edge of the Pacific
A 1,200-mile expedition across the Sonoran Desert, 1775–76 — and the living trail it left behind.
Anza TrailA 1,200-mile expedition across the Sonoran Desert, 1775–76 — and the living trail it left behind.
In the autumn of 1775, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza led roughly 240 colonists — soldiers, families, servants, and livestock — northward from Sonora along the first overland route connecting New Spain to Alta California. The 1,200-mile journey, completed in the rainy season of 1775–76, ended at the site of present-day San Francisco and reshaped the colonial geography of western North America. The route the expedition followed crosses lands that were already home to many Native peoples, whose communities remain here today.
The route of the 1775–76 Anza expedition crosses the ancestral and present-day homelands of many Indigenous nations. These communities were not conquered or erased by the colonial route that passed through their territories — they are still here, and the land remains theirs in ways that predate and outlast every expedition. We recognize their sovereignty and the ongoing relationship between these nations and the places depicted in this map.
Fifty-nine voices have shared their connection to the land the expedition crossed. One of them:
Eight places along the Anza route, each fully explorable in 360° — petroglyphs on the corridor, the Gila riverbank the expedition followed, the Tucson saguaro country it crossed, and the Bay Area landscape where the journey ended.
The full interactive map — 96 campsites, 59 stories, 360° imagery, Journey Mode, live weather.
Open the interactive map →This map was created as part of the Anza 250 commemoration, marking 250 years since the 1775–76 expedition (October 2025–June 2026). The Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail is administered by the National Park Service, which preserves and interprets the route across two countries. The interactive map and 360° imagery were produced by Terrain360.