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who sailed with Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602.
Fray Ascensión wrote in his journal of Viz-
caíno’s voyage that California was separated
from the American continent by the “mediter-
ranean Sea of California.” This claim led to
European mapmakers depicting California as
an island for the first time. Even after Father
Kino established that Baja California was a
peninsula 100 years later—and a 1747 royal
edict from King Ferdinand VII of Spain, who
declared officially “California is not an
island”—some cartographers rejected the
truth and continued to draw the “island of
California” on maps until the 1780s.
EXPLORING UPPER
CALIFORNIA
Father Kino died suddenly on March 15, 1711,
in Magdalena, Sonora, while visiting to dedi-
cate a new chapel. Inaddition to diaries that
are now invaluable to students of the region,
his legacy included the first accurate maps of
Pimería Alta, the Gulf of California, and Baja
California. Hehad conclusively proven that
Baja California was a peninsula, not an island.
Without the charismatic and industrious Kino
to sustain the missions he founded, however,
many of them declined. An even stronger(^148) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
The myth that California was an island persisted long after its beginning in 1602, even after Kino had
disproved it. This 1650 map by Joan Vinckeboons depicts California as an island separate from the rest
of the present-day continental United States.(Library of Congress)
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