presidio

They’d soon start building their presidio fort a few miles away, the twin foundations of Spain’s God and empire.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026

Led by a military commander and the Franciscan missionary Fray Junipero Serra, a combined expedition of soldiers and friars reached San Diego in 1769 and built the first mission and fort, or presidio.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

The presidio had yielded to the glass office towers of downtown.

From New York Times ● Nov. 21, 2012

The presidio of Caldera was destroyed by the Moros.

From A History of the Philippines by David P. Barrows

The governor was also capitán general of his province, and his capital was usually at the principal presidio or garrison.

From The Colonization of North America 1492-1783 by Herbert Eugene Bolton

The database has informed dozens of articles and books on early California and has allowed thousands of people to trace their own ancestry back to 18th century California pueblos, presidios and Native villages.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2025

Missions, presidios, and pueblos were small polygons of order in the great unruly geometry of Alta California, with wide stretches between them largely ungoverned by the Spanish.

From Slate ● Feb. 9, 2015

Farther to the south lay Spanish California and the ill-defined region to the eastward over which presidios maintained a shadowy jurisdiction.

From Union and Democracy by Allen Johnson

Don Diego tried to ascertain the forces of the enemy with accuracy; he ordered the ports to be reconnoitered and the presidios to be fortified.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 36, 1649-1666 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century. by Edward Gaylord Bourne

A constant succession of expeditions, sorties, raids, and campaigns moved in from the coast, left their mark on the land and its inhabitants, then retreated to the missions and presidios.

From Colonial Expeditions to the Interior of California Central Valley, 1800-1820 Anthropological Records 16(6):239-292, 1958 by Sherburne Friend Cook