Portrait of Juana Mariataken after rescue

Many of us encountered Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell in elementary and middle school, but I honestly never knew before today that it was based on a true story.  Apparently, the Newbery Medal winning book that tells the story of Karana, a Native American girl who survives for years stranded on the island formerly inhabited by her people, is based on the real-life survival story of a woman named Juana Maria, better known as the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island."  I was especially fond of survival stories and stories about befriending animals when I was a kid, so I absolutely ate this book up.  I even remember playing pretend with my friends that we were stranded on the same island as Karana.  To find out that the events depicted in the children's novel actually took place (more or less) just gets me over the top giddy!

Juana Maria's story and its popularity with young readers in the form of O'Dell's novel made San Nicolas Island and the Channel Islands off the coast of California famous.  It also inspired Navy archaeologist, Steven Schwartz, to search the island, which is now a Navy base designed to track missiles.  After investigating the island for more than 20 years, Schwartz and his team believe that they have found the very cave in which the Lone Woman lived!

Archaeology student inside the cave, courtesy of LA Times

According to the Los Angeles Times article on the find, because there was no known cave on the tiny island in which the Lone Woman might have stayed, Schwartz concluded that the cave must have collapsed and been buried.  When he acquired a government survey map dated 1879 that pinpoints the location of an "Indian Cave," he knew that this was the place to dig.  When more than 40,000 buckets of sand were removed from the cave, relics from the Juana Maria's time were discovered.  There was also a separate discovery of two redwood boxes held together with tar at some nearby cliffs.  The two boxes hold more than 200 stone blades, harpoon points, bone fishhooks and other tools, and Schwartz speculates that they may have been placed there by the Lone Woman, who was known to stash useful things all around the island.

In light of this awesome discovery, I'm definitely going to have to do a reread of Island.  It's been a very long time since I've read it, and I can't wait!  I'll be sure to post on here about my reread, just as soon as I plow through this very bleh John Grisham book I'm reading.  If you'd like to join me in reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, you can buy yourself a copy, new or used, by clicking here or by going to the Shop tab at the top of the page.  Also, here's a link to the Wikipedia article on Juana Maria for anyone interested in the story of the actual woman who inspired the book.