to find safe harbors for their crafts. Baja California became the northwest limit of Spanish colonization, and even there, efforts to settle the area and bring native tribes to Christianity and European ways were halfhearted at best. Not until the Seven Years War (1756-1763) realigned European alliances and their colonial empires did Spain seriously attempt to assert control of Alta California. This was to be done through a combination of military forts (presidios) and mission churches overseen by Franciscan fathers led by Junípero Serra. In 1769, the first parties set north from Baja California, and the line of Spanish settlement along the coast was inaugurated when soldiers and priests established a presidio and mission church at San Diego. By the end of the Spanish colonial period, Alta California had three more presidios (at Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara) and no fewer than twenty-one missions. In addition to the missions,
nothing was done and California remained undisturbed by European settlement for another two centuries. In the second half of the eighteenth century the world balance of power was shifting and New Spain was being threatened by several European powers including England, France and Russia. The Spanish King, Carlos III, decided that Spain would have to physically occupy California or risk losing it. In 1769 Gaspar de Portola and Father Junipero Serra led an expedition that established missions and presidios in San Diego and Monterey and discovered the hitherto unknown port of San Francisco. Serra, who remained in California after Portola departed, together with his successors established a system of missions running from San Diego in the south to Sonoma in the north. These together with a few undermanned presidios and very small towns were to constitute the high water mark of Spanish involvement in California. The Spanish crown did not see California as a source of revenue. It was,
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