For several years now I’ve posted about regions that exist on maps, sites you could visit if you wanted to, places that can be pinpointed with latitude and longitude coordinates. I guess that’s why today I decided on a location fairly described as more myth than reality. In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers bent on finding riches in the New World convinced themselves that there existed in what is now the southwestern United States, seven wealthy cities they collectively referred to as Cíbola, or less often Cíbula. Inexplicably setting out in the summer heat of 1540, Francisco de Coronado led the long march from Mexico to the area where he expected the cities to be. He was mistaken. “The seven ciudades are seven small towns, all consisting of the [rectangular stone] houses I describe[d earlier].” Of the seven, “each one has its own name, and no single one is called Cíbola,” he wrote in his account to the king of Spain. Today the Cibola National Forest and Grasslands encompass 2,213,591 acres of New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.
Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.