Departure of the Domínguez–Escalante Expedition
- When
- 1776
- Where
- Santa Fe, New Mexico; Santa Rosa de Abiquiú pueblo, New Mexico
- Episodes
- 2
On July 29, 1776, Franciscan friars Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, with cartographer Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco and other men, departed Santa Fe seeking an overland route to the Spanish missions of Las Californias, including Monterey.
Episodes
- Departure from Santa Fe
Domínguez led the expedition out of Santa Fe on July 29, 1776, with Escalante, cartographer Miera y Pacheco, and ten men.
- Early route through Abiquiú
Within days of departure the party reached the pueblo of Santa Rosa de Abiquiú, held a Solemn Mass, and continued north and northwest.
Background and detail
Background. The expedition was a Spanish journey of exploration undertaken in 1776 by two Franciscan priests, Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, to find an overland route from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to their Roman Catholic mission in Monterey on the coast of modern central California.
Departure from Santa Fe. On July 29, 1776, Atanasio Domínguez led the expedition out of Santa Fe with fellow friar Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and cartographer Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco. The party traveled with ten men through unexplored portions of the American West, and the initial leg followed the route Juan Rivera had taken eleven years earlier into the Ute country of southwestern Colorado.
People involved
- Francisco Atanasio Domínguez · expedition leader, Franciscan friar
- Francisco Silvestre Vélez de Escalante · Franciscan friar
- Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco · cartographer
Sources
- Domínguez–Escalante expedition Wikipedia, revision of 2026-05-11
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.