Found a 1940s map where California is an island

Was flipping through a box of old stuff my uncle left me and pulled out this map from 1942 that has California completely separated from the mainland by water. Anyone else run into maps from that era with that weird mistake?

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faith_thomas16h agoTop Commenter

I'll say it's a cool find, but people get too worked up about old maps being wrong. Cartographers back then didn't have satellites or Google Earth to check their work. They were working with rough sketches from sailors and explorers who might have seen things wrong or just made stuff up. The idea that California was an island actually went back to the 1600s, so by 1942 it was more of a fun holdover than a serious mistake. Honestly, it's neat to see how people used to think about the world, but it's not some shocking revelation that they got things wrong.