The Kingdom of California

October 5, 2018–January 2, 2019

California as an Island

The earliest maps of California show the land mass as a peninsula. This changed when in 1602, a Carmelite friar, Antonio de la Ascensíon traveling with Sebastian Vizcaíno on his voyage up the West coast declared with certainty that California was an island and sent the report and a map sketched on the spot through the Jesuit network to Europe. The Dutch plundered the Spanish ship, and the erroneous map made its way to Amsterdam where it was widely circulated. California appeared separated from the mainland by influential English and Dutch cartographers for over a hundred years.