If California were a country its economy would be the fifth largest in the world.
Yet the tech boom is not the starkest way California has ever stood apart from its neighbours.
That would surely be the maps depicting it as an island, entire of itself.
Map of California as an island, by Joan Vinckeboons, ca.
1650
The intriguing story of how the maps came to be deserves a little mapping itself.
They mistook it for an island and called it California.
And for the next eighty years published maps reflected this correct view.
By 1747, Ferdinand VI of Spain had had enough.
He issued a reasonably clear decree, California is not an Island.
But the royal newsflash travelled slowly.
California would appear as an island as late as 1865 on a map made in Japan.
How had such a large piece of America been wrenched free?
The Spanish clergyman Antonio de la Acension played a crucial role.
Acension’s island view was believed by many in Europe.
And in the early 1620s maps showing California as an island started appearing in Spain and Holland.
Thefirst English oneappeared in 1625, next to an influential article about the search for the Northwest Passage.
From there the error took flight, deceiving map makers and readers throughout the world for decades.
Even though maps may be presented as accurate, they cannot escape their metaphorical nature.
They reflect much more than physical geography.
That California was mapped as an island for so long speaks to its separateness.
The state contains around 2,000 plant species found nowhere else.
Its borders comprise dizzying mountains, harsh deserts and immense ocean.
It has been home to the Gold Rush, the psychedelic era, the silicon boom.
In several ways then, California is an island.
Audienca De Guadalajara, Nova Mexico California, &C, Nicolas Sanson, ca.
This article originally appeared inThe Public Domain Review, and was reproduced here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license
