USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The first explorers and settlers of Coastal California were American Indians. The most expansive European colonizations efforts were made by the Spanish. On September 28, 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew entered San Diego Bay–the first Europeans to visit California.

Detailed explanation-2: -Montalvo described this mythical California as an island inhabited solely by black women who lived “in the manner of Amazons.” Historians assume that Montalvo’s novel was known to the Spanish explorers who first sailed along the coast of the Baja California peninsula in the early 1500s.

Detailed explanation-3: -The first Europeans to explore the California coast were the members of a Spanish sailing expedition led by captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo from the Viceroyalty of New Spain (modern Mexico); they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island.

Detailed explanation-4: -During the 1500s, Spain expanded its colonial empire to the Philippines in the Far East and to areas in the Americas that later became the United States. The Spanish dreamed of mountains of gold and silver and imagined converting thousands of eager Indians to Catholicism.

Detailed explanation-5: -In the early 1500s, Spain made a few attempts to explore Florida and the Gulf coast. Around 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon, conqueror of Puerto Rico, conducted the first reconnaissance of the area. In 1519 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda explored and mapped the Gulf of Mexico.