Why is Baja California often shown as an island on maps between 1500 and 1700?
Upvote:1
According to Wikipedia, this might be based on the romance novel Las sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, which contains the first written mentioning of the Island of California.
It is probable that this description prompted early explorers to misidentify the Baja California peninsula as the island in these legends.
Upvote:8
So, in researching the link from sbi, I think he's got one piece of the puzzle, but there seem to be a few more.
- Juan de Fuca (the same guy from whom the straits around Vancouver Island / the Seattle area are named), had claimed to have found a Northwest Passage
- Sailors from the south had also found the Gulf of Baja California, and frankly its big - so big that it would have been real easy to say, 'Oh, that's Juan's strait'
- There was the romance novel Las sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, mentioned above.
Put them together, and you have an island.
Given the resources at the time, and a surfeit of targets for exploration, it makes sense they would have said, 'This is an island, we'll get around to mapping it later.'
That this was not an island was realized in 1744, when an overland expedition proved it be part of the mainland.
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