29 Facts About Pedro Fages

Pedro Fages was a Spanish soldier, explorer, first Lieutenant Governor of the Californias under Gaspar de Portola.

In 1769, Pedro Fages was selected by visitador Jose de Galvez to lead a detachment of soldiers on one of the ships of the Gaspar de Portola-led expedition to found San Diego, California.

Lieutenant Pedro Fages sailed from Guaymas to the Baja California port of La Paz.

Costanso recounts a demonstration Pedro Fages arranged to prove the superiority of Spanish firearms.

Pedro Fages then ordered his best marksmen to shoot at the same target.

But, since Monterey was far away, Pedro Fages had free rein to run Alta California as acting governor.

Pedro Fages decided the amount of work they had to do in a certain time, harshly punishing soldiers caught resting or rolling a cigarette.

Pedro Fages's soldiers had to trudge through mud to the forest to chop wood, then drag their mules out of the mud and head home.

Pedro Fages' soldiers viewed him as a tyrant, until complaints by the soldiers persuaded padre president Junipero Serra to intervene.

Pedro Fages had started a large vegetable garden with an irrigation supply, and three plots dedicated to growing wheat, barley, rice and beans.

Rather than follow Portola's difficult trail around Monterey Bay to Santa Cruz and along the coast, Pedro Fages found an easier route through present-day Salinas and the Santa Clara Valley.

Pedro Fages set out north from San Diego again in 1772, establishing another new trail, departing from the earlier trail near today's Castaic Junction to continue north over Tejon Pass into the San Joaquin Valley.

The Spaniards had not so far had much luck as hunters in California but, in desperation, Pedro Fages ordered that the soldiers set out in small parties to hunt the huge and fearsome California grizzly bear.

Pedro Fages himself joined the hunt, and earned his nickname El Oso while hunting bears near San Luis Obispo.

Pedro Fages was replaced as lieutenant-governor by another veteran of the Portola expedition, Fernando Rivera y Moncada.

In 1777, Pedro Fages was posted to Sonora to fight the Apaches, where he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Pedro Fages returned to Monterey in 1777, appointed Governor of the Californias, replacing Felipe de Neve.

Pedro Fages was promoted to colonel in 1789, and resigned his governorship in 1791.

Pedro Fages moved back to Mexico City, where he died in 1794.

Pedro Fages journeyed to Mexico City with her mother and brother to join her father Agustin Callis, captain of the Free Company of Volunteers of Catalonia formed to suppress rebellions by Pima and Seri Indians of Sonora.

In 1781, Eulalia and Pedro Fages traveled to Arizpe, Sonora, where Eulalia gave birth to her first child, Pedrito.

When Pedro Fages got reassigned to Alta California as governor in 1782, Eulalia and Pedrito remained in Sonora.

Pedro Fages repeatedly asked the friars running mission Santa Clara to grant Eulalia hospitality there.

When Pedro Fages seemed unfazed by the separation, Eulalia accused him of consorting with an Indian maidservant of their household.

Pedro Fages confided to Palou that Eulalia still felt unhappy in his house and still wanted to return to Mexico.

Pedro Fages asked Palou to escort Eulalia as far as Guadalajara.

The place Pedro Fages entered in the San Joaquin Valley is a California Historical Landmark number 291 signed on June 27,1938.

Pedro Fages appears as a minor character in the 1955 film Seven Cities of Gold, which presents a fanciful and historically inaccurate account of the founding of Spanish California.

Pere Pedro Fages is the protagonist of the historical novel La ultima conquista by Ramon Vilaro and is a secondary character in Los acasos by Javier Pascual.