Why California is an Island on Old Maps

Maps from the 16th to the 18th century are riddled with errors, myths, bad theories, & lies but one really stands out amongst the others. For hundreds of years, California was depicted as an island.

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[justmyopinion]

Is it possible that at the time these explorations were happening, the Salton Sea was in full flux and the Colorado flowed through it to the Sea of Cortez? That might explain the mistaken impression that the left coast was an island.

[dfgyuhdd]

What I found more notable than whether or not it was connected to mainland, which can be attributed to the limits of exploration, is how wrong they got the scale. Compare Baja to Florida which they pretty much nailed despite southern Florida being insanely difficult terrain.

[ernestcline]

Since before Japan opened up to the outside world, their primary outside contact was with the Dutch it makes sense how a Japanese map would be one of the last ones to show an island of California.

[GeographyGeek]

Thank you RareMaps.com for supporting another video! Their maps and descriptions are a huge part of the research and visuals that go into these videos. You can purchase your own map with the Island of California on their website - RareMaps.com

[baraxor]

The Spanish knew from the 1540s that California was a peninsula and not an island, and showed this on what atlases they had. Before the Eighty Years War the Dutch, with their Spanish connections, originally showed California as a peninsula.

The problem was that the Pacific was a "Spanish lake" until the mid-18th century...if you weren't a Spanish vessel, you tended to get attacked and killed. The Spanish themselves didn't give a flying flip about anything that didn't relate to the Manila Galleon trade route, so anything north of Cape Mendocino was terra incognita and the west American coast itself was considered too rocky and dangerous to approach closely, which is why San Franciso Bay wasn't discovered until much later and by land.

Based on fantastical Spanish speculation that fell into the hands of Spain's rivals, and with no practical way to verify the truth, French cartographers began to show California as an island, and since France was top dog under the Sun King, soon every atlas in the non-Spanish world--which would be just about all of them--showed California as an island, until Spain's rivals became powerful enough at sea, and Spain itself became too weak to resist them, that these ships could actually go and see what the west coast of California looked like.

[shiina]

I had no idea the name “California” was so old!

[qazwsxedc]

I've had this question since I first saw one of your videos!

[vademecum]

If you drive up the 395 from Palmdale to the north, the high desert, you could see that the land was a washout. Probably an old lake in Wyoming's southwest corner broke loose and washed the soil filling in the old ocean that was between California and Nevada and then creating the grand canyon. You could kinda tell on Google maps and more if you just drive around those areas and look around for yourselves that some kind of catastrophic event took place there.

[chudborea]

There is one map which depicts California as an island and also includes the Mexican peninsula always used as an explanation for this mistake. Which would take into question whether that is a legitimate explanation.

[dutchman]

Yep, blame the Dutch again for their lack in fact checking! ;)
But that is the way science works, take the knowledge of others, complete it with your own knowledge, and until others prove you are wrong, it's the new 'truth'. Step by step, mostly small ones, we discover the natural world and the universe we live in. There is so much more to discover!

[thomasrinschler]

Heh, 3:10 not only shows California as an island, but has the Rio Grande (labeled as "R. del Norte" flowing out of Nuevo Mexico past Santa Fe) flowing into the Pacific as well!

[petestsck]

The areas are coral where it shows the water between Cali and the east

[daveharrison]

9:25 California - New Mexico - Florida
Nothing else in between

[claramente]

Not hundred of years, from Cortés just 50 years until Urdaneta discover the return voyage from Philippines to Palo Alto and navigate by the coast to Acapulco...

[sbyrd]

The world’s climate was very different in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s. It was the middle of the Little Ice Age (1350-1850). That would mean a lot more snow and ice draining from the mountains into the lowlands. The Salton Sea last flooded to merge with the mouth of the Colorado River and the head of the Gulf of California as recently as 1907, making the peninsula of the Californias to extend up as far as Palm Springs! Then the Salton Sea has been slowly shrinking ever since. Also the phantom Tule Lake flooded in the record rains of 1862 (at the lowlying San Joaquin Valley) putting all the land from Bakersfield to Sancramento and the San Francisco Bay underwater for a number of years until it started drying out again. Tule Lake reappeared in minature form as recently as January 2023. This made the peninsula of the Californias in 1862 to extend from the San Francisco Bay for hundreds of miles east and south until approximately present day Bakersfield. The Californias really have been almost an island even in the last 250 years of European settlement, except at a very narrow neck at the San Gabriel Mountains and the Grapevine (Palm Springs to Bakersfield). Before the 1500s & 1600s there were even greater possibilities for climate changes (and even earthquakes) changing the topography. We do know now (through the study of tree rings) that the 1700s brought a disastrous 40 year drought (1720-1760) which made a wasteland of Alta California. That could explain why the Spanish did not bother much with Alta California until the drought broke in the 1760s, concentrating on Baja California ( ironically to us). Could the drought have dried out the Salton Sea and the massive but shallow Tule Lake, giving the Californias their present configuration? That is about the same time mapmakers starting depicting Alta California as mainland and Baja California as peninsula. This opens up the possibility that the old mapmakers may not have been as ignorant as we depict them in showing the Californias as near shore island (only missing the narrow bottleneck of the time). Maybe it is us who are ignorant of all the changes over the last 1000 years+ (?).

[myrtleman]

California Natives were seen as black skinned with hair like Ethiopians it was said Queen Kalifa discovered California.

[willge]

Why would you think it’s an error. To say those explorers were that stupid to make that mistake is crazy. If you do your research California was an island until the mountains collapse and that 200 mile lake came running and push all the segment and rocks and filling the Red Sea. That’s why they have so many earthquakes because the ground is just sent from that flood. Look at google maps and look how the land flow

[JohnnyButtons]

It’s “Baja-California”… they hadn’t yet mapped Northern California like Southern California.

[edgeeffect]

Ironic that it predicted that California was full of gold.

[williamhermann]

Seems pretty obvious to me that the maps showing california as an island were either made when the ocean levels were higher or were inspired by maps from a time when the ocean was higher.