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ISLAPEDIA is a comprehensive California Channel Islands encyclopedia covering hundreds of topics and thousands of entries on all eight California Channel Islands. It includes people, place names, ships and shipwrecks, island events and noteworthy topics. It was begun in 1973 by cultural anthropologist, Marla Daily, President of the Santa Cruz Island Foundation (1987-current). Islapedia is a continuing research work in progress—now in its 40th year.
BIOGRAPHIES: From Waldo ABBOTT, Santa Barbara ornithologist, to American herpetologist, Richard George ZWEIFEL, ISLAPEDIA includes over 1000 biographies of people whose lives intersected with California's Channel Islands.
ARTISTS: From James Madison ALDEN (1834-1921) to Theodore WORES (1858-1939), artists began painting island scenes as early as the 1850s. Island-inspired paintings can be counted from over two dozen professionals between 1850 and 1950. James McNeil Whistler executed an engraving of Anacapa Island in 1854, seventeen years before he painted his mother's infamous portrait. American painter, Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993), spent many weeks over many years on Carey' Stanton's Santa Cruz Island—Diebenkorn's best man at his 1943 wedding!
COLLECTORS: Anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, botanists, ecologists, geographers, geologists, herpetologists, lichenologists, ornithologists, oologists, taxonomists, and zoologists have been drawn to the eight California Channel Islands in their research quests. Museums around the world hold specimens taken from the Channel Islands as early as the 1840s: the British Museum has a Santa Rosa Island fox collected in 1842 by Captain Kellett and Lieutenent Wood; William Gambel wrote of his visit to Santa Catalina Island in 1842. ISLAPEDIA tracks collections from almost 400 "takers" through 1950.
DEATHS: Historic deaths that have occurred on the islands — by accident, by murder, by suicide — are listed by island, and cross-referenced alphabetically throughout ISLAPEDIA. Seventy-five men and four women have died on Santa Cruz Island alone.
VESSELS: Over 450 vessels are included, from the 19th century otter-hunting schooner, ACHILLES, to ZINGARA, a 52-foot gasoline-powered schooner that burned off Anacapa Island in November 1931. More than 140 shipwrecks are listed by island, and cross-referenced alphabetically throughout ISLAPEDIA.
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