currently. When the ancient Salinas river was in that southern location, it may have served as the mouth of a river that drained the catchment of the Colorado River, that currently flows from the Rocky Mountains into the Sea of Cortez in western Mexico. The Salinas River is also thought to have been, about 700,000 years ago, the outlet for prehistoric Lake Corcoran. Lake Corcoran once filled much of what is now California's Central Valley, prior to the lake's developing an outlet via the Carquinez Strait, to empty through the present San Francisco Bay. Prehistory People first appeared along the California coast – approximately 13,000 years ago, during the latter part of the Pleistocene epoch. Up until European settlement in Alta California, the indigenous people who lived along the Salinas River were the Rumsen in the northern Salinas Valley, and the Salinan in the southern Salinas Valley. The Chalon and Esselen peoples also lived in the general area near the Salinas River. Mission and Rancho eras The Salinas river was first sighted by European settlers on 27 September 1769. This first European contact with the river was recorded by the Spanish "colonizing expedition" of Gaspar de Portolà. As was the practice of the Spanish government in the New World at the time, soldiers and priests were then typically sent out on such colonizing expeditions. The Portolá expedition included Franciscan priests, who soon thereafter established two missions along the banks of the Salinas river (then referred to as el Rio de Monterey.) The new missions built along the banks of the Salinas river were the Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad established in 1791, and the Mission San Miguel Arcángel, established in 1797. The Mission San Antonio de Padua was established during this same time period in the Salinas Valley, but not on the river itself. These three missions were a part of the chain of 21 missions, then commissioned by the Spanish government in Alta California, now the U.S. State of California. All three of the Salinas Valley missions remain intact to this day, the Soledad mission having evolved into the City of Soledad, and the San Miguel mission having evolved into the unincorporated village of San Miguel. The San Antonio mission is now embedded in Fort Hunter Liggett (a U.S. Army garrison). The mission period ended with the Mexican revolution and the replacement of missions with ranchos in the