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José Joaquín de la Santísima Trinidad Moraga (22 August 1745 – 13 July 1785), usually simply known as José Joaquín Moraga, was a Spanish colonial expeditionary and soldier who founded San Jose, California, in 1777.
Spanish explorer. Learn about this topic in these articles: exploration of San Francisco. In San Francisco: Exploration and early settlement. Settlers from Monterey, under Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga and the Reverend Francisco Palóu, established themselves at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula the following year.
Founder of San Francisco. An officer in the Spanish army, Lieutenant Don Jose Joaquin Moraga arrived in California as second in command to Juan Bautista de Anza during Anza's expedition to the area. Moraga would be chosen by Anza to lead a group of men who, in 1776, established the first settlements of the town of San...
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The body of the founder of the Mission and Royal Presidio of San Francisco, Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga, was laid to rest in the previous mission church after his death on July 13, 1785. So deeply was he esteemed by the Franciscans that when the current church was dedicated in 1791, Moraga's body was reinterred inside the mission close to ...
- Before You Begin…
- Background – Moraga and The Anza Expedition
- Background – Moraga and The Rancho Laguna de Los Palos Colorados Land Grant
- Background – Carpentier Consolidation of The Land Grant
- Background – Moraga Land Association – First Development Attempt
- Background – James Irvine’s Moraga Company – Second Development Attempt
- Background – Moraga Company – The Great Depression and Moraga as Agribusiness
- Background – Utah Construction Company 1953-1966: We Develop You Build
- Background – Bruzzone and Reinventing The Old Town Site as The Moraga Center
Each Stop on the Old Moraga Town Site Walking Tour has its own MHS web page with additional information and images to help you see the past and present. Some people, however, crave historical context, and for them we have provided a snapshot background of the stages in Moraga’s evolution until its incorporation in 1974. So before you embark on your...
In 1775 and 1776 Juan Bautista de Anza led two expeditions from Tupac in Sonora, Mexico. The first expedition was to establish the ideal locations for missions, presidios, and pueblos (towns). The second expedition included families of the soldiers. These families settled in Alta California. De Anza’s lieutenant, Jose Joaquin Moraga, was tasked wit...
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War on February 2, 1848. Mexico ceded Alta California to the United States. The treaty recognized Mexican land grants as valid, but a March 3, 1851 act shifted the burden of proving title onto the Mexican grant holders. As the Gold Rush ended settlers flooded the area and grabbed what they believed ...
In 1850 Horace Walpole Carpentier, a lawyer and businessman from New York, came to the San Francisco Bay Area. He helped found Oakland for whom he served as the first mayor on its incorporation in 1854. Among his business interests was the land in the Moraga Valley, where he pursued a multi-decade strategy to consolidate ownership of the increasing...
In June of 1889 Carpentier sold the Rancho to James A. Williamson and Angus A. Grant who had railway business backgrounds and saw potential to develop the Moraga Valley. Their plan was to bring a railroad in from the Oakland side. The challenge facing the eastward ambitions of Oakland and Berkeley was the formidable “Oakland Hills” ridge that runs ...
On August 24, 1911 Carpentier deeded a right of way through the Rancho to the Oakland & Antioch Railway whose goal was to connect Oakland to Sacramento with an electric railroad. It tackled the ridge challenge by driving the Shepherd Canyon Tunnel through the ridge, exiting just where Pinehurst Road begins its winding route to the top. The track ra...
Complications from the Great Depression sidelined the development plans of the Moraga Company which pivoted its focus and turned its landholdings in the Moraga Valley into a vast agribusiness. During the Carpentier ownership cycle land was rented out to “tenant farmers”, individuals who provided their own capital and determined how it was deployed,...
On August 24, 1947 James Irvine, the visionary behind the Moraga Company, passed away at age 77, and, because the Moraga Company included minority shareholders, it took some time for the estate heirs to figure out the continuing destiny of the Moraga Company. In 1935 businessman Donald Rheem took an interest in the Rancho Laguna and purchased parce...
Bruzzone, who favored the latter route which would have bent northwards west of the Old Moraga Town Site and connected with St Mary’s Road north of what today is the Moraga Center (ie Safeway), embarked on a plan to develop the Moraga Center as a shopping stop for drivers heading from Oakland to Walnut Creek and beyond. After Cal Trans lost interes...
In June 1776, the colonists, led by Anza’s second in command, Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga, were given permission to continue their journey to San Francisco Bay and build there the presidio and mission for which the colonists had left their homeland.
Joaquin Moraga’s grandfather, Lieutenant José Joaquin Moraga (1746-1785), was second in command in the De Anza Expedition of 1775, and the founder of the San Franciso Presidio, which served as a fort. In 1841 Moraga built a two-room adobe home on a hill overlooking what is now the site of Miramonte High School.
