Posted on 11/09/2022 6:38:03 PM PST by SunkenCiv
[subtitle: The incredible (and indeed untrue) story of President Taylor's APE]
It’s 1849, and a Gold Rush is drawing thousands of American prospectors to California, which was snatched from Mexico only a year earlier. The lay of the land is still poorly surveyed, the risks and resources of the terrain as yet largely unknown.
So US President Zachary Taylor initiates a top secret government programme to speed-map the last piece in the puzzle of America’s Manifest Destiny...
Predating the launch of Sputnik by over a century, President Taylor’s task force, consisting of civil engineers and frontiersmen, constructs a rocket in the Californian wilderness, equips its payload with the most powerful camera known to humankind at the time – endowed with revolutionary colour-capturing capacity – and launches it skyward from the slopes of Mount Whitney.
The President’s Astro-Physical Expedition (APE) put California’s local flora to good use, hollowing out a redwood tree and stuffing it with gunpowder to create a giant firing tube. An incredible concatenation of good fortune conspires to bless Taylor’s APE with success: the redwood cannon does not disintegrate, the projectile survives its violent skyward thrust, and the camera mounted inside its body happens to be in the right angle for a shapshot of the mid-19th century Californian landscape.
Of course this is not what happened. But it’s a charming, steampunky backstory for this map, which purports to be a satellite image of California, taken in 1851. Both the map and the backstory were created by Mark Clark, a geographer who lives in California’s Central Valley [4] and is fascinated by its past aquatic history...
(Excerpt) Read more at bigthink.com ...
“Lots of strike-slip faults. One day, there will be a big one. After their abortion vote yesterday, probably sooner than later. “
A 9+ San Andreas quake might flatten SF and LA and bring the rest of the state back to control of sane people.
Might even move back.
Yes, clearly this image was after the bad white men diverted the Truckee river and let Pyramid Lake drop 83+ feet and Lake Winnemucca dry up on the Indian lands.
I was born at March Air Force Base in Riverside. Left when I was 1. Never went back.
I can see Otisburg
Lived for almost 60 years within a few miles of the coast. Rather nice if you could afford it.
Liberalism and their laws ruined it and I bailed out 17 years ago. Dual residence in hawkish and Arizona now.
hawkish = Hawaii
Dipsh!t FR spell correct
I find it interesting that some can draw a map like this and have never have seen it like we take for granted. They must be good at math and have an imagination.
bkmk
Yes, given the rather puny ISP of black gunpowder.
:^) Yup, glad there are some around here who actually read the excerpt. :^D
Mono Lake, yeah, I went to high school with her...
Yup. With trickle irrigation, they could have both. If the open trenches carrying water were covered to prevent or greatly reduce evaporative losses, same goes.
Check
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