Spanish Contributions to 15th Century California Geography

Carl O Sauer’s writings on Spain’s exploration of the New World

All the information provided in this article was derived from the writings of Carl O Sauer. The historical geography of the Spanish in California is rich, these are only the accounts of the first commissioned surveys of California coast and the maps they produced.

Carl O Sauer

Famously known for his contributions to post-16th century North American geography, Carl O Sauer remains one of the United States’ treasured intellects of the last 100 years. He formulated the concept of “cultural landscapes” which is still widely referred to in today’s mainstream ecological sustainability vernacular. Sauer was a precocious individual with professional interests in domains of the natural world, specifically botany, geography, and history. To this day he arguably holds the first and most detailed formal geographical analysis of the Ozark Highlands.

After college and various research endeavors he earned a job as professor of geography at the University of Michigan, and years later he would become Chairman of the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A unique aspect of his writing is in his ability to synthesize historical information as it…