Spanish Expeditions To The Pacific Northwest - 1790 Voyage of Fidalgo

1790 Voyage of Fidalgo

In 1790, Spanish explorer Salvador Fidalgo took the San Carlos to Alaska, visiting and naming Cordova Bay and Port Valdez in Prince William Sound. Acts of sovereignty were performed at both places. Fidalgo entered Cook Inlet and found the Russian post Pavlovskaia, the Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin Company post at the mouth of the Kenai River. Fidalgo did not stop at the post but continued west to Kodiak Island, where he noted Shelikov's post. Fidalgo then went to the Russian settlement at Alexandrovsk (today's English Bay or Nanwalek, Alaska), southwest of today's Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula, where again, Fidalgo asserted the Spanish claim to the area by conducting a formal ceremony of sovereignty.