California has been a land of hopes and dreams, opportunities and endless possibilities, and a place with allusions to glamour and danger. It is a state where fact and myth often overlap. According to some geologists, when one of the big quakes comes, California will break off from the mainland and become an island. Was the state ever an island?
"The idea of California as an island is supposed to have originated with a Carmelite Friar, Father Antonio Ascension, possibly on a misconception of the reports of the Spanish navigators Juan de la Fuca 1592 and Martin d’Aquilar 1602, one of whom reported a great opening in the west coast and the other a vast inland sea north of Cape Medocin. Father ascension, about 1620, drew up a map of his idea of California as an island and dispatched it by ship to Spain. The ship was captured by the Dutch and the chart taken to Amsterdam." —Tooley, R.V. The Mapping of America, 1980; p.110.
Recommended Reading
- California Dreaming: Boosterism, Memory, and Rural Suburbs in the Golden State
- Myths and Mysteries of California: True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained
- Only in California: Fabulous Facts, Weird Happenings, and Eccentric Ephemera from America's Most Altered State
- California: Mapping the Golden State through History. Rare and Unusual Maps from the Library of Congress
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem