[Illustration: Gray whale migrations in winter are an annual spectacle.]
This park honors the man who led the first European exploring expedition along the California coast. Sailing under a Spanish flag, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo departed on 27 June 1542 from the port of Navidad on Mexico’s west coast. He commanded the ship _San Salvador_ (with a crew of 60); with him was _Victoria_, and another smaller vessel. His objective: “to discover the coast of New Spain.” Three months later he hove to in “a very good enclosed port”—San Diego Bay. This was the mariner’s first landfall north of Baja peninsula. Cabrillo himself died and was buried in the Channel Islands. His crew went on to explore as far north as Oregon, seeing new landmarks and new peoples, not all friendly.
The park is located on Point Loma, within the city of San Diego. Features include a heroic statue of Cabrillo, dramatic views of the Pacific and San Diego Bay, and Old Point Loma Lighthouse, a 1850s structure. In winter, the point is a good place to see the annual migration of the gray whale.
For information about the park and its programs, write:
Superintendent Cabrillo National Memorial P.O. Box 6670 San Diego CA 92166
[Illustration: The 14-foot sandstone statue of Cabrillo is the work of Portuguese sculptor Alvaro DeBree. Completed in 1939 for the San Francisco World’s Fair, it was eventually relocated here. The portrait is conjectural; there is no known likeness of the explorer.]
If any of the leading _conquistadores_ who march through these pages kept a running account of his adventures, the journal has been lost. Except for occasional letters, the closest we can come to firsthand information are reminiscences written or dictated by lesser participants many years after the events described. Some supplementary material also comes from court testimony. More immediacy is lost by the fact that most English readers must depend on translations of varying accuracy and fluency. There are several translations of all main documents.
The first of the New World adventurers to reminisce in print was Cabeza de Vaca. His _Relación ..._ appeared in 1542. Buckingham Smith’s English translation, first printed in 1855, was later included with several other documents in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528-1543_, edited by Frederick Hodge and Theodore Lewis (New York, 1907).