THE STRAITS OF ANIAN
Port Orford comes down to us from almost time immemorial. It is a pioneer within itself. Its history was first brought to light over 300 years ago by Martin de Aguilar, an old Spanish explorer, who discovered the westerly headland near here and named it Cape Blanco. He was seeking for the world's prize in the mystic Straits of Anian, which as far back as 1500, Cortereal, another Spanish navigator, claimed to have discovered and passed through in his ship from one great ocean to another leading to India, and which he named as Anian.
Others later claimed to have followed him through the same water ways, even giving the latitude and longitude of their voyages, and describing fabled cities and populated places they passed through.
As Magellan had discovered the strait in the South, it was thought there must be one in the North, also uniting the two oceans. Aguilar proclaimed to the world, not only his discovery of Cape Blanco, but further, near there the real Anian Straits, and still more, he reported his finding of a river near Blanco, and close by here, which he named the Rio de Aguilar. From the productions which he describes at its entrance, we can almost identify a river not far from us here today. Illness of some of his crew, he states, prevented his exploration of the strait and the river.
Equally mysterious, he further reports near Port Orford and the Cape, by the latitude he gives of the north headland, an immense island which he represents on his chart as the Island of California. Appearing upon his charts, other explorers believed him, and the charts of mariners one hundred years after Aguilar's charts in 1602, still contained the legend of the mystic Straits of Anian; and for a time later even the existence of the Island of California, just north of Cape Blanco. Later, however, explorations of the Gulf of California proved
