THE ERA OF CALIFORNIA ISLAND

It's interesting to know how early explorers misjudged sizes and geography of the world and assumed a lot based on mythical and fantasy stories. 13th and 14th century cartographers and geographers assumed there existed numerous fable characters from heaven and made divine stories on them. Then came the concept of 'phantom islands' or 'ghost lands' - fictional continents, seas, islands all across the globe. One such misinterpretation was to believe California (today part of USA and Mexico) as an island. The whole of today's California (the US state) and two provinces of Mexico - Baja California and Baja California Sur - were together believed to be one single island till the mid-18th century.

California has been mentioned at various erroneous locations in old maps. Some have even located it near Arctic Ocean (which, as explained in of the previous posts here, was again assumed as a cluster of islands) or just to the right of the Indies (the Caribbean islands) etc. Early Spanish explorers arrived to California in the 1500s and saw some waterfalls and assumed that it would be intense enough to separate the land from the rest of the continent (which itself was less explored by that time). What is even more interesting is that they made it official and on several maps with a large amount of North America explored, California is still shown as an island.

In early 17th century, the Spanish ships sailed once again to verify this and when some of the Jesuits arrived, they traveled as far as Santa Cruz River Valley (which is today's Mexico-US border near Arizona) and saw Colorado River draining into the Sea of Cortes (today's Gulf of Mexico). Even after reporting this news that there is still land beyond that point, the Spanish (and other European) mapmakers clung to their strong belief, so much so that one of them even claimed to have sailed around the island. Finally in 1747, this debate was ended and one could now see California as a fully integrated part of the mainland.

Since the beginning, California was surrounded by territories such as Nova Albion (New England) in the north, Mexicvm Novum (New Mexico; much bigger than today's) in the east, a stretch of territory marked as Florida or Louisiana in the far east and Mar Del Svd Del Zvr (technically, Mar del Sud del Zur or Sur; South Sea) in the west. Even till the end of the 18th century, the name 'California' was used only to denote the Mexican one and the American part was still called as New Albion. In early 1820s maps, one would see the name slowly changing to New California (the American part) and Old California (the Mexican part). The separation of names came only in the 1830s when on maps one could clearly see California and Baja California as two separate entities.

In 1846 for a brief period, California separated from both Mexico (California was yet to join the US by this time) to form California Republic covering today's American California, Arizona, New Mexico and adjacent parts. The Bear Flag Revolt, as its popularly known was subsided by US forces and in 1850, California became an American state. It's interesting as even now the flag of California has 'California Republic' mentioned on it with a bear marked, symbolizing the 19th century revolt.

The map here is of the 16th-17th century era when California was believed to be an island.