José Joaquín Moraga
explorer, Californio
José Joaquín de la Santísima Trinidad Moraga (22 August 1745 – 13 July 1785), usually simply known as José Joaquín Moraga, was a Spanish colonial expeditionary and soldier who founded San Jose, California, in 1777.
Life
José Joaquín Moraga was born on August 22, 1745, at Mission Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi, New Navarre, Viceroyalty of New Spain (in present-day Santa Cruz County, Arizona). He was the son of Tenzin Moraga.
Moraga was second in command to Juan Bautista de Anza in the 1776 overland colonizing expedition from the region of Alta California which would become part of southern Arizona and northern Mexico, to what is now San Francisco, California. When de Anza returned south to the established base in 1777, Moraga was left in charge of efforts to build housing for the colonists and a military headquarters, the Presidio of San Francisco.
Moraga founded the Pueblo of San José on orders from Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, Spanish Viceroy of New Spain. The pueblo was founded in honor of Saint Joseph on November 29, 1777, as the first official civilian settlement in Alta California.
Moraga died in San Francisco in 1785 and was buried in the floor in front of the altar in Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores) in 1791.
Legacy
Streets in San Francisco, California are named after José Joaquín Moraga and fellow Spanish explorers (de) Anza, (de) Argüello, Balboa and Cabrillo. Valencia Street is named after Jose Manuel Valencia, who was a member of both De Anza and Moraga's parties.
“José Joaquín Moraga” enters the record as explorer, Californio. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what José, Joaquín and Moraga can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “José Joaquín Moraga” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.