Francisco Garcés

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Francisco Hermenegildo Tomás Garcés (April 12, 1738 - July 18, 1781) was a Spanish Franciscan missionary who explored much of the southwestern part of North America, including what are now Arizona, southern California, and northeastern Baja California.

Garcés was born in Monte del Conde in Aragon and was ordained in 1763. He served at the Franciscan college of Santa Cruz in Querétaro. In 1768, when the Jesuits were expelled from their extensive mission fields in northwestern New Spain, Garcés was among their replacements, assigned to Mission San Xavier del Bac near present-day Tucson.

The expulsion of the Jesuits set in motion a sequence of dramatic events in the missions. While the Franciscans from the Querétaro college took over responsibility in Sonora and southern Arizona, other Franciscans from the college of San Fernando in Mexico City, under the leadership of Junípero Serra, were assigned to replace the Jesuits in Baja California. Serra's Baja California Franciscans were also charged with spearheading a bold advance of the Spanish missionary frontier northward into Alta California, beginning in 1769. In 1773, control of the Baja California missions passed to the Dominicans. The Franciscans in Alta California, like the Jesuits in Baja California before them, recognized the desirability of establishing on overland connection with New Spain through the region of the lower Colorado River.

Garcés became a key player in that effort. He conducted extensive explorations in the intervening, unsettled region of the Colorado and Mojave deserts and northern Arizona, sometimes on his own and sometimes in conjunction with the soldier-explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. The missionary met with and produced accounts of several Indian tribes, including the Havasupai.

In 1779 Garcés was assigned to ill-fated hybrid mission/colonies being established on the Colorado River among the Quechan. The warlike native peoples soon clashed with the disruptive Spanish settlers, and in July 1781 Garcés and his fellow missionaries were among those killed in a general uprising and massacre.

Garcés' body was later re-interred at San Pedro de Tubutama. There are two memorials to Father Garces in Bakersfield, California: a statute is located at the Garces Circle on Chester Avenue and the city's Catholic high school, Garces Memorial High School.

The Garces Circle "Curse"

Long Term Residents of Bakersfield report more accidents at the Circle than any other stretch of road in town. A local legend has grown up stating that the statue of Fr. Garces will attempt to warn those who "run the circle" by either waving or pointing at those involved in the up coming accidents. Though this may simply be people looking at the statue rather than road.

Bakersfield Rallies Around Garces

The statue was to be relocated in either 2007-2008 (niether of these years is before 2006?) to make way for a new two story freeway however citizens so objected to the move that the city finally relented late in 2006 and moved to leave the statue right where it sits.