Wenceslaus Linck (1736 – after 1790) was the last of the outstanding Jesuit missionary-explorers in Baja California

Baja California

Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North...

.

Born in Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

 (now part of the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

), he entered the Jesuit order at age 18 and studied at Brno

Brno

Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...

 and Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

. In New Spain

New Spain

New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...

, he continued his studies in Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

 and Puebla

Puebla

Puebla officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 217 municipalities and its capital city is Puebla....

 between 1756 and 1761. In 1762 he was sent to Baja California, initially to Santa Gertrudis

Misión Santa Gertrudis

Mission Santa Gertrudis, called Dolores del Norte by some historians, was founded by the Jesuit missionary Jorge Retz in 1751 among the Cochimí Indians of the Baja California Peninsula, about 80 kilometers north of San Ignacio...

, at that time the northernmost Jesuit establishment. After preparing under Santa Gertrudis' missionary, Georg Retz, Linck moved north in the same year to found San Francisco de Borja Adac

Misión San Francisco Borja

San Borja was a Spanish mission established in 1762 by the Jesuit Wenceslaus Linck at the Cochimí settlement of Adac, west of Bahía de los Ángeles....

 among the northern Cochimí

Cochimi

The Cochimí are the aboriginal inhabitants of the central part of the Baja California peninsula, from El Rosario in the north to San Javier in the south....

.

In addition to administering the mission at San Borja, over the next five years Linck undertook a series of exploring expeditions to scout future mission sites and resolve geographical puzzles. His travels included journeys to the peninsula's west coast, to Isla Angel de la Guarda

Isla Ángel de la Guarda

Isla Ángel de la Guarda, also called Archangel Island, and called Xazl Iimt east of Bahía de los Ángeles, and separated from the Baja California Peninsula by the Canal de Ballenas . It is the second largest of the eleven Midriff Islands or Islas Grandes. It is part of the state of Baja California,...

, and to the north in an ambitious but failed attempt to reach the lower Colorado River

Colorado River

The Colorado River , is a river in the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The watershed of the Colorado River covers in parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states...

 and settle once and for all the geographical question of whether Baja California was an island.

When the Jesuits were expelled from Baja California in 1768, Linck returned to Bohemia, where he was still living in 1790.

Linck's geographical and ethnographic contributions have been preserved in a series of letters and reports, as well as accounts by his contemporaries, and his key role in the exploration of the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula has been recognized (Aschmann 1959; Linck 1966, 1967; Barco 1973; Bendímez and Laylander 1985).