Early Knowledge Of The Pacific Northwest
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Early Knowledge Of The Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest coast of North America was one of the last coastlines reached by European explorers. In terms of sailing time from Europe, it was one of the most distant places on earth. This article covers what Europeans knew or thought they knew before the area was explored by Captain Cook in 1778. It is not clear what the Chinese and Japanese knew of the area to the north. The accuracy of the Strait of Anián story implies that they may have known something. The Spaniards sent some expeditions north from Mexico but found little to interest them. In 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo reached a point north of San Francisco. In 1579 Drake landed somewhere on the coast above 43 degrees N latitude. In 1592 Juan de Fuca may have reached Puget Sound, Washington. In 1602 one of Sebastián Vizcaíno's ships reached Oregon. This was the last northward exploration for 150 years. Strait of Anian: From about 1562 many European geographers thought there was a Strait of Anián, perhap ...
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1772 Vaugondy And Diderot Map Of The Pacific Northwest And The Northwest Passage - Geographicus - DeFonteAutres-vaugondy-1772
Year 177 (Roman numerals, CLXXVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Commodus and Plautius (or, less frequently, year 930 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 177 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Commodus, Lucius Aurelius Commodus Caesar (age 15) and Marcus Peducaeus Plautius Quintillus become Roman Consuls. * Commodus is given the title ''Augustus (honorific), Augustus'', and is made co-emperor, with the same status as his father, Marcus Aurelius. * A systematic persecution of Christianity, Christians begins in Rome; the followers take refuge in the catacombs of Rome, catacombs. * The churches in southern Gaul are destroyed after a crowd accuses the local Christians of practicing cannibalism. * For ...
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Cape Mendocino
Cape Mendocino (Spanish: ''Cabo Mendocino'', meaning "Cape of Mendoza"), which is located approximately north of San Francisco, is located on the Lost Coast entirely within Humboldt County, California, United States. At 124° 24' 34" W longitude, it is the westernmost point on the coast of California. The South Cape Mendocino State Marine Reserve and Sugarloaf Island are immediately offshore, although closed to public access due to their protected status. Sugarloaf Island is cited as California's westernmost island. History It was named by 16th-century Spanish navigators to honor Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain, Cape Mendocino has been a landmark since the 16th century, when Manila Galleons followed the prevailing westerlies across the Pacific to the Cape, then followed the coast south to Acapulco, Mexico. The Cape Mendocino Light was lit on December 1, 1868, standing on eight prefabricated panels sent up from San Francisco. An automated light stood near the original lo ...
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Baffin Bay
Baffin Bay ( Inuktitut: ''Saknirutiak Imanga''; kl, Avannaata Imaa; french: Baie de Baffin), located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland, is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization as a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is sometimes considered a sea of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is connected to the Atlantic via Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. The narrower Nares Strait connects Baffin Bay with the Arctic Ocean. The bay is not navigable most of the year because of the ice cover and high density of floating ice and icebergs in the open areas. However, a polynya of about , known as the North Water, opens in summer on the north near Smith Sound. Most of the aquatic life of the bay is concentrated near that region. Extent The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of Baffin Bay as follows: History The area of the bay has been inhabited since  BC. Around AD 1200, the initial Dorset settlers were replaced by ...
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Chesterfield Inlet
Chesterfield Inlet (Inuit: ''Igluligaarjuk'')Issenman, Betty. ''Sinews of Survival: The living legacy of Inuit clothing''. UBC Press, 1997. pp252-254 is an inlet in Kivalliq Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is an arm of northwestern Hudson Bay, and the end point of the Thelon River after its passage through Baker Lake. Cross Bay, a large widening of the inlet, occurs east of Baker Lake. There are several islands located within the inlet. The first European here may have been William Moor in 1747 who sent boat parties about 60 miles up the inlet. In 1762 William Christopher followed the whole inlet to Baker Lake. The Inuit hamlet of the same name, Chesterfield Inlet, is situated near the waterway's mouth. In previous times, the area was home to Aivilingmiut The Aivilingmiut (or Aivilik) are those Inuit who traditionally have resided north of Hudson Bay in Canada, near Naujaat (Repulse Bay), Chesterfield Inlet, Southampton Island, and Cape Fullerton. They are descendants of the Thule ...
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Ukkusiksalik National Park
Ukkusiksalik National Park () is a national park in Nunavut, Canada. It covers of tundra and coastal mudflats south of the Arctic Circle and the hamlet of Naujaat (formerly Repulse Bay), from Hudson Bay's Roes Welcome Sound towards the western Barrenlands and the source of Brown River. The park surrounds Wager Bay, a -long inlet on the Hudson Bay. Although the smallest of Nunavut's four national parks, it is the sixth largest in Canada. Its name relates to steatite found there: ''Ukkusiksalik'' means ''"where there is material for the stone pot"'' (from ''ukkusik'', meaning ''pot'' or ''saucepan'' like qulliq). In addition to a reversing waterfall and over 500 archeological sites, including an old Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) trading post, the region is home to such species as polar bears, grizzly bears, Arctic wolf, barren-ground caribou, seals and peregrine falcons. Vegetation in the park is typical low tundra, with dwarf birch, willow and mountain avens. Scattered pat ...
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Wager Bay
Wager Bay or Ukkusiksalik Bay is long narrow inlet in the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut, Canada, which opens east into Roes Welcome Sound at the northwest end of Hudson Bay. Ukkusiksalik National Park surrounds it. History Wager Bay was first charted by Christopher Middleton during his Arctic explorations of 1742. He named it after Sir Charles Wager and was trapped in the bay for three weeks until the ice cleared in Roes Welcome Sound. In 1747, William Moor sent boat parties to the head of the bay. Geography The bay is a long inlet stretching through tundra; its shoreline measures in length. The elevation is above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb .... It drains an area of , through numerous small rivers, including the Brown River and Sila River. ...
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Strait Of Juan De Fuca
The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada) is a body of water about long that is the Salish Sea's outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the centre of the Strait. It was named in 1787 by the maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley, captain of ''Imperial Eagle'', for Juan de Fuca, the Greek navigator who sailed in a Spanish expedition in 1592 to seek the fabled Strait of Anián. Barkley was the first non-indigenous person to find the strait, unless Juan de Fuca's story was true. The strait was explored in detail between 1789 and 1791 by Manuel Quimper, José María Narváez, Juan Carrasco, Gonzalo López de Haro, and Francisco de Eliza. Definition The United States Geological Survey defines the Strait of Juan de Fuca as a channel. It extends east from the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, to Haro Strait, San Juan Cha ...
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Sea Of The West
The Sea of the West, or ''Mer de l'Ouest'', was a geographic misconception of an inland sea in the Pacific Northwest that appeared on many maps of the 18th century. The depiction was particularly common on French maps. The sea was supposed to be connected to the Pacific Ocean by at least one strait. Many different conjectures about the sea's shape, size, and position appeared on maps of the period. Belief in the sea's existence derived from writings describing two voyages of discovery, one by an Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte, and one by Juan de Fuca. De Fuca's voyage might have happened, but his account is now known to have contained many distortions and confabulations. Admiral de Fonte, on the other hand, is not known to be a historical figure, and the account of his voyage is fiction. Several maps in the early 1700s depicted the sea, but interest and belief in its existence waned until the mid 1700s, when, fairly suddenly, ''Mer de l'Ouest'' reappeared on maps and quickly became co ...
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Adak Island
Adak Island ( ale, Adaax, russian: Адак) or Father Island is an island near the western extent of the Andreanof Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Alaska's southernmost town, Adak, Alaska, Adak, is located on the island. The island has a land area of , measuring long and wide, making it the List of islands of the United States by area, 25th largest island in the United States. Due to harsh winds, frequent cloud cover, and cold temperatures, vegetation is mostly tundra (grasses, mosses, berries, low-lying flowering plants) at lower elevations. The highest point is Mount Moffett, near the northwest end of the island, at an elevation of 3,924 feet (1,196 m). It is snow covered the greater part of the year. Adak is its largest and principal city. The word ''Adak'' is from the Aleut language, Aleut word ''adaq'', which means "father". History Adak Island has been the home to Aleut people, Aleut peoples since antiquity. Russian explorers in the 18th century also v ...
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Prince Of Wales Island (Alaska)
Prince of Wales Island (Tlingit: ''Taan'') is one of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle. It is the fourth-largest island in the United States (after Hawaii, Kodiak Island, and Puerto Rico) and the 97th-largest island in the world. Geography and ecology The island is long, wide and has an area of , about one-tenth the size of Ireland and slightly larger than the state of Delaware. Approximately 6,000 people live on the island. Craig is the largest community; founded as a saltery in the early 20th century, it has a population of 1,500. Some 900 people live in Klawock, a long-established village that grew with the fishing industry. Hollis was a boom and bust mining town from 1900 to about 1915. Abandoned, it was re-established as a logging camp in the 1950s. It now has a population of 100 and is the location of the ferry terminal. Mountain peaks, all but the tallest of which were buried by Pleistocene glaciation, reach over . Fjords, steep-si ...
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Aleksei Chirikov
Aleksei Ilyich Chirikov (russian: Алексе́й Ильи́ч Чи́риков; 1703 – November 14, 1748) was a Russian navigator and captain who, along with Vitus Bering, was the first Russian to reach the northwest coast of North America. He discovered and charted some of the Aleutian Islands while he was deputy to Vitus Bering during the Great Northern Expedition. Biography Early life Little is known about Chirikov's early life other than that the Russian was born in 1703. There is a claim, which originated in 1941, that he was the son of one of Peter the Great's master carpenters. It is known that Chirikov began his service in the Russian Imperial Navy in 1716, and later in 1721 he graduated from the Naval Academy with the rank of Sub-lieutenant. Exploration In 1725–1730 and 1733–1743, he was Vitus Bering's deputy during the First and the Second Kamchatka expeditions, having been made a captain in 1733. In June 1741 Chirikov in the ''St Paul'' and Vitus Beri ...
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Great Northern Expedition
The Great Northern Expedition (russian: Великая Северная экспедиция) or Second Kamchatka Expedition (russian: Вторая Камчатская экспедиция) was one of the largest exploration enterprises in history, mapping most of the Arctic coast of Siberia and some parts of the North American coastline, greatly reducing "white areas" on maps. It was conceived by Russian Emperor Peter the Great, but implemented by Russian Empresses Anna and Elizabeth. The main organiser and leader of the expedition was Vitus Bering, who earlier had been commissioned by Peter I to lead the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725 to 1731). The Second Kamchatka Expedition lasted roughly from 1733 to 1743 and later was called the Great Northern Expedition due to the immense scale of its achievements. The goal was to find and map the eastern reaches of Siberia, and hopefully the western shores of North America. Peter I had a vision for the 18th-century Russian Navy to m ...
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