Spanish interest in colonizing Alta California was revived under the visita of José de Gálvez as part of his plans to completely reorganize the governance of the Interior Provinces and push Spanish settlement further north. Ultimately, New Spain did not have the economic resources nor population to settle such a far northern outpost.

Sea routes ran counter to the southerly currents of the distant northwestern Pacific. ĭon Fernando Sánchez Salvador researched the earlier proposals and suggested the area of the Gila and Colorado Rivers as the locale for forts or presidios preventing the French or the English from 'occupying Monterey and invading the neighboring coasts of California which are at the mouth of the Carmel River.' Alta California was not easily accessible from New Spain: land routes were cut off by deserts and Indigenous peoples who were hostile to invasion. Juan Bautista de Anssa proposed an expedition from Sonora in 1737 and the Council of the Indies planned settlements in 1744, although these plans did not take action. Plans in 1715 by Juan Manuel de Oliván Rebolledo resulted in a 1716 decree for extension of the conquest (of Baja California) which came to nothing. In 1697, a Jesuit expansion into California was funded and the Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó was established that same year. See also: Portolá expedition Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó was the first mission established in the Californias (present-day Loreto, Mexico) in 1697.įather Eusebio Kino missionized the Pimería Alta from 1687 until his death in 1711. History Plans for colonization (1697–1769) Įvidence of Alta California remains in the numerous Spanish place names of American cities such as San Diego, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, and San Bernardino. Spanish soldiers, settlers, and missionaries invaded the homelands of the Indigenous peoples of California, people of the Great Basin, and the Pueblo peoples in the establishment of Alta California. To the southeast, beyond the deserts and the Colorado River, lay the Spanish settlements in Arizona. The El Camino Real trail established by the Spanish extended from Mexico City west to Santa Fe, and California, as well as east to Florida. In 1850, California joined the union as the 31st state. That change was undone in 1846, but rendered moot by the outcome of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when most of the areas formerly comprising Alta California were ceded to the U.S. The territory was re-combined with Baja California (as a single departamento) in Mexico's 1836 Siete Leyes (Seven Laws) constitutional reform, granting it more autonomy. states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Following the Mexican War of Independence, it became a territory of Mexico in April 1822 and was renamed Alta California in 1824. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of Las Californias, but was made a separate province in 1804 (named Nueva California).

Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as Nueva California ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain formally established in 1804.

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