Francisco Vázquez de Coronado

Spanish explorer of the American southwest

  • Fame54.4
  • Momentum0.0
  • Wikipedia11K
Source-basedStable
Lived 1510–1554, aged 44Spain
  • Wikipedia
    41 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1510–1554
    Aged 44
Summary
Updated 2026-06-21

He marched thousands of miles chasing cities of gold that didn't exist, but what he found instead — the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, the American Southwest mapped for the first time by European eyes — outlasted the myth.

Biography

About

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado left Mexico in 1540 leading a large expedition north in search of the Cities of Cíbola, the fabled Seven Cities of Gold that Spanish rumor had placed somewhere in the unknown lands beyond the frontier. The treasure never materialized. What his party encountered instead, between 1540 and 1542, was geography: the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, and a sweep of the southwestern United States extending all the way to present-day Kansas, none of it previously recorded by Europeans. He returned empty-handed by the standards of conquistador ambition. He died in Septembe…

Deep cuts

Era & geography

No era information yet.
Deep cuts

Legacy

No legacy summary indexed yet.
Where to find them

Platforms

No platforms connected yet.

By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Stable
54.4
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Historical22.2
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
Global rank
Country rank
Category rank
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence