The 17th Century Island of California: A Scientific Explanation?
Throughout the 1600s European cartographers mistakenly depicted California as an enormous island lying off the west coast of North America, despite the fact that during the 1500s it was widely known to be a peninsula and had been mapped correctly. Why did this infamous and persistent error occur? Join Jenny E. Ross as she describes how she developed an interdisciplinary explanation for this 400-year-old mystery using historic maps and first-person accounts written by 17th-century explorers, combined with recent scientific evidence from hydrology, climatology, and volcanology. Hint: The Salton Trough plays a starring role in this fascinating story! Presented by the Anza-Borrego Desert Paleontology Society www.anzaborregopaleo.org. Steele Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center, 401 Tilting T Drive, Borrego Springs.