On June 27, 1776, seven days before the Declaration of Independence was signed in the East, a group of weary travelers arrived in what would become San Francisco and began to scratch their lives into the verdant valley that would become the Mission District — and the sand dunes and serpentine rock of the future Presidio.
They were led 1,200 miles on a trek that wound through heat and snow by Spanish Lt. Col. Juan Bautista de Anza. Though it was officially a flex of the Spanish Empire, the settlers themselves were of Mexican, African, Indigenous and European blood.
“A lot of them were fairly poor,” said Lance Beeson, a descendant of Lt. José Joaquin Moraga, who guided the expedition the last leg of the trip. “They didn’t have a chance to own land where they were recruited from.”…