who led the first overland expedition to san diego
Portolá expedition Captain Fernando Rivera, moving north through Baja California, gathered horses and mules from the fragile chain of Catholic missions to supply his overland expedition. José de Gálvez had ordered Rivera to requisition horses and mules from the missions without endangering their survival and give the friars receipts for the number of animals taken; those missions would later get restocked with animals brought over from the Mexican mainland. Friar Juan Crespí, selected as chaplain for the Rivera party and diarist for the Franciscan missionaries, traveled 24 days from Mission La Purísima, 400 miles (640 km) north to Velicatá (near the current town of Ramona), then the northern frontier of Spanish settlement in Baja California. There Crespí met up with the Rivera party, which set out from Velicatá on March 24. Their mule and horse train, tended by three muleteers, carried 25 leather-jacket soldiers and 42 Baja California Christian Indians (all men).[7]
Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and traders from about 1811 to 1840, and was only passable on foot or by horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared increasingly farther west, and eventually reached all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, at which point what came to be called the Oregon Trail was complete, even as almost annual improvements were made in the form of bridges, cutoffs, ferries, and roads, which made the trip faster and safer. From various starting points in Iowa, Missouri, or Nebraska Territory, the routes converged along the lower Platte River Valley near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory and led to rich farmlands west of the Rocky Mountains.