1595 - Spanish Pacific Northwest
Meanwhile, on the California coast, Spain advanced its interests. For two centuries after the Rodríguez Cabrillo expedition, Spanish interest in California had been sporadic. After Francis Drake's surprise appearance along the California coast, Spain's need to defend its northern claim received short-lived attention. After a series of explorations along the Pacific coast at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, California lay fallow for over 165 years, except for Manila Galleons, which made landfall there from time to time. In 1595, one of the Manila Galleon ships under Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeño wrecked off Point Reyes. Today, the National Park Service protects and interprets the remains of Rodríguez Cermeño’s shipwreck in Drakes Bay at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Spanish claims to the Pacific Northwest date to the Papal Bull “Inter Caetera” of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. These decrees gave Spain the right to colonize the west coast of North America. Spain began to colonize this claimed territory in the 18th century, when it created permanent settlements in Alta California. By the late 18th century, Spain launched its first official explorations to the Pacific Northwest, in part because of the encroachment of Russian and British fur traders and explorers to the region. Beginning in 1774 and ending in 1793, Spain sent explorers to Alaska to defend its claim to the land, to document Russian and British activities, and to search for a Northwest Passage. One of the areas that the Spanish explored is today the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
King Charles III of Spain and his successors sent Spanish explorers to the coasts of present-day Washington State, Alaska, and Canada between 1774 and 1793 to investigate Russian and British activities in the region and to strengthen Spain’s claim to the land. Juan Josef Pérez Hernández sailed on the Santiago during the first official Spanish voyage from Mexico as far north as Southeast Alaska before turning back in 1774. The next year, Spanish explorer Francisco Bodego y Quadra sailed a bit further to Kruzof and Prince of Wales Island. By 1779, Ignacio de Arteaga y Brazan and Bodega y Quardra made it to Prince William Sound and Elizabeth Island before returning to Mexico.
In 1788, José Esteban Martínez stopped American intruders in the area of the Pacific Northwest that Spain had claimed. Esteban Jose Martinez and Gonzalo Lopez de Haro reached the Prince William Sound, Kodiak Island, and the Trinity Islands where they were alarmed by evidence of Russian, British, and American trading in the area. On this expedition, the explorers made contact with a large group of Russian traders and learned that the Russians intended to occupy Nootka Sound on the west coast of what is now Vancouver Island. Martinez recommended that the Spanish occupy this area immediately before the Russians or British could do so themselves.
In 1779, James Cook entered the Pacific Northwest and threatened the Spanish isolation in the region. Immediately, Spanish officials sought to strengthen their claim there by researching the earliest Spanish interest in the area and by sending expeditions north to reassert their claims. In 1790, Spain contended that a maritime expedition commanded by Juan de Fuca had reached the northern coast of present-day Washington State in 1590. Spanish maps showed the Strait of Juan de Fuca as the possible entrance to the Northwest Passage sought by Drake, Cartier, Hudson, Champlain, and others.
In 1789, Martinez led an expedition to Nootka Sound and seized the English fur-trading ships he found there; these events led to the Nootka Crisis of 1789. While the contest for Nootka was intense and both nations prepared for war, ultimately it was resolved peacefully through a set of three agreements known collectively as the Nootka Conventions. Under the Nootka Conventions (1790, 1793, and 1794), Spain and Britain agreed that they would not establish any permanent settlements at Nootka Sound, but both would allow citizens and ships from either nation to visit and continue to trade there.
For the next two years, 1790-92, Spanish ships, almost in tandem, explored the entire coast north of California. During that period, the Spanish explored, mapped, described, and claimed present-day Sitka, Mt. St. Elias, Prince William Sound in the Gulf of Alaska, Kenai Fjords, Cook Inlet, Katmai, and other sites along the Alaska Peninsula. They named places like Valdez and Cordoba after prominent Spanish officials as well as other long since renamed sites. The Spanish also established short-lived settlements on present Vancouver Island, one of which still bears the name of Port Alberni, and Neah Bay, on the northern coast of Washington State, once represented the northernmost, albeit short-lived, Spanish settlement in the continental United States.
While the Spanish eventually lost all claim to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, the Spanish legacy is still evident in the places that take their names from the early Spanish presence in Alaska. In addition to Malaspina Glacier and Lake, Disenchantment Bay, and Icy Bay, two towns near the park - Cordova and Valdez - also received their names from these early explorations.
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