As a result of Ganado's location at the crossroads of ancient trade routes and pueblos, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's exploration party passed near the Ganado area in AD 1540–1542 en route to the famous Hopi Villages 50 miles to the west. "Spanish colonial and later sources beginning with the 1540 Spanish Entrada (a detachment of the Coronado expedition) record indigenous trails linking the Wide Ruins area to Zuni and Awatobi (Bartlett 1940; Kessell and Hendricks 1992:553; Adams 1963; Chaves and Warner 1976; Van Valkenburgh 1991 {1941:115–116}; Walker and Shepard 1964 {1859}; Cushing 1965 {1882}. As the silver mines funded greater and greater Spanish expansion into the frontier of "New Spain," King Philip II of Spain directed Conquistador Juan de Oñate to begin establishing Holy See missions in Nuevo México. As Roman Catholicism spread, by the 1629, "the mission of San Bernardino was established at Awátobi by a party of four Franciscans headed by Father Francisco de Porras", as the Hopi villages were architecturally accommodating as built up population centers.