The Spanish Crown, which has maintained a number of missions and presidios in New Spain since 1519, had laid claim to the north coastal provinces of California in 1542.

Settlement of northern New Spain, excluding Santa Fe in New Mexico, has been slow.

A settlement at Loreto, in Baja California Sur, had been established in 1697, but it had not been not until the threat of incursion by Russian fur traders and potentially settlers, coming down from Alaska in 1765, that Spain, under King Charles III, had felt development of more northern installations were necessary.

The Spanish Empire was engaged by this time in the political aftermath of the Seven Years' War and colonial priorities in faraway California afford only a minimal effort.

Following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768 and their replacement by the Franciscans, the latter have been charged with extending Spanish control far to the north, into Alta California, while the Dominicans are to take over the missions in Baja California.

Misión San Fernando Rey de España de Velicatá, at the Cochimí settlement of Velicatá on the route north, is inaugurated by Junípero Serra; it is to be the only mission founded by the short-lived Franciscan administration in Baja California.