Franciscan Frontiersmen: How Three Adventurers Charted the West

Pious and scholarly, the Franciscan friars Pedro Font, Juan Crespí, and Francisco Garcés may at first seem improbable heroes. Beginning in Spain, their adventures encompassed the remote Sierra Gorda highlands of Mexico, the deserts of the American Southwest, and coastal California. Each man’s journey played an important role in Spain’s eighteenth—century conquest of the Pacific coast, but today their names and deeds are little known. Drawing on the diaries and correspondence of Font, Cresp...