Imagining the West

California appears as an island on this map, with Cape Blanco, now known as the westernmost point on the Oregon coast, denoting the island's northern coast. This mythology of California's island nature might well be a prediction of future events, but it was certainly for 200 years a strongly held belief, appearing on many maps. Perhaps it comes from explorers' logs citing the bay of San Francisco and others citing the Baja Gulf, and conclusions were drawn literally on the map of a watery path between the two. John Speed was a popular and busy English mapmaker, who called on Amsterdam's Abraham Goos to engrave this map. This reflects the collaboration among the mapmaking community in these two often-warring nations. 20^th-century color highlights this map.

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