Entrance of the San Carlos into San Francisco Bay

People at the shore's edge shouted for the Spanish to come ashore, and over the six weeks that followed they came aboard more than once; Ayala reported them always friendly. He made the survey nursing a wound, a loaded pistol having gone off in his foot weeks into the voyage, and the first chart of the bay was drawn from the ship's launch by his pilot, José de Cañizares. Ayala had hoped to meet Anza's land party here. It came the following March.

What the plaque says

First Ship into San Francisco Bay On August 5 1775, the Spanish packet San Carlos, under the command of Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala, became the first ship to enter San Francisco Bay. A month and a half was spent in surveying the bay from its southern most reaches to the northern end of present-day Suisun Bay. The San Carlos departed September 18, 1775. California Registered Historical Landmark No.236 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the San Francisco Twin Bicentennial, Inc., August 5, 1975.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muir Beach Overlook — 9.7 mi
  A cliff edge on Highway 1, and the concrete dugouts where two-man crews watched the sea after Pearl Harbor.
• Muir Woods National Monument — 10 mi
  A redwood canyon saved from a reservoir by a gift, and named for a man who had been there once.
• Earthquake Trail — 26 mi
  A short loop along the San Andreas, where a broken fence shows how far Point Reyes moved in under a minute in 1906.
• Kule Loklo — 27 mi
  A Coast Miwok village built in the 1970s to honour a people its builders were told had died out. They had not.

More markers nearby

• Juana Briones, Pioneer Settler of Yerba Buena — 0.8 mi
• Original Site of Third Baptist Church — 0.9 mi
• Telegraph Hill — 0.9 mi
• Farnsworth's Green Street Lab — 1.2 mi