About This Site


		Introduction: ABOUT THIS SITE

About This Site

Web de Anza is a growing, evolving, collaborative web site. It is designed to provide teachers, students, and scholars with primary source materials concerning Juan Bautista de Anza and his two historic 18th century expeditions from northern Sonora to northern California, leading to the colonization of San Francisco.

Contents
This site contains primary source diaries and letters in both English and Spanish written by the soldiers, colonists, and friars who traveled on the two 18th century expeditions led by Captain Juan Bautista de Anza from New Spain to northern California leading to the colonization of San Francisco. It also offers a wide array of secondary resources such as maps, chronologies, pictures and articles linked strategically to the diaries to facilitate historical research.

Purpose and Design
The site is designed to encourage independent exploration and sustained examination of the information it contains. Users can move back and forth between the diaries and letters, or proceed through the linked web of information following a variety of relevant themes. A day in Anza's 1775-76 Diary illustrates the future form and function of the rest of the diaries. The order and juxtaposition of materials is completely user-configurable; however a guide for using the site by "throwing" links into three separate windows will soon be added to the Help section. Resource Guides will soon be available to help you organize your time and attention. Future additions to the site will include sound and video resources, many more pictures and maps, and user-selectable diary page lengths ranging from a single paragraph to an entire book.

Main Sections
The core of Web de Anza is the Archives. In it you will find Spanish transcriptions of the original manuscripts and English translations of the diaries kept by Anza for each expedition, as well as the those of the Franciscan friars and officers who accompanied him. Letters relevant to the two Anza expeditions can also be found in the Archives. Supporting the site is an Overviews section, which offers general information about the expeditions, including brief descriptions of the characters in a Who's Who, a synopsis of Anza's 1775-76 Diary, and a chronology of the events of his journey.

Important for studying and understanding the two Anza expeditions are the many types of Reference Materials contained in the site. These include an Image Gallery, an Atlas of Maps, a short Biography of Anza (with other biographies to come in the future), Collateral Materials written by scholars and research assistants, and a Bibliography of the materials consulted and used in creating Web de Anza. Each of these reference materials is an electronic book, with a table of contents to help you find the document or image you want to see.

Web de Anza's Search feature allows searching each diary individually, but in the future will allow searching across the entire web site.

Historical Context | Help | Credits | Bibliography | Copyright Policies

Revised June 23, 2000