In 1775 and 1776, Lt. Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza, Father Pedro Font, and 240 settlers, soldiers, and others traveled 1,800 miles from Sonora, Mexico, to Monterey, California. Anza then led a smaller party to choose sites for the mission and presidio in San Francisco and to explore the East Bay. On April 2, 1776, the explorers stopped near this location in the homeland of the Huichun-Aguasto, an Ohlone-speaking tribe, and traded with local fishermen, perhaps from a nearby Carquin Ohlone village, for a fish they had never seen before. Font recorded seeing well-made tule boats and Indians fishing with nets, and Anza described the fish as two and one-eighth varas long, lacking scales or interior bones, with star-like markings on the skull and very small gilded eyes; they ate it and found it palatable and tender.