maps and charts as Bodega Bay and Bodega Harbor (fig. 1). These names derive from the assumption that Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, in the course of exploring this coast in 1775, discovered the bay and harbor, anchored his vessel in one or the other, and assigned his name. Two towns, a headland, a rocky islet, and a nearby hill also bear his name, commemorating his reputed discovery. A folk version of the derivation of the names, still current among some of the local inhabitants, was noted by Hubert Howe Bancroft in 1884: "Many suppose the name to have come from the fact that the Russians... had their cellars-in Spanish, bodegas-here." Bancroft, however, dispelled this notion for historians by relating Bodega y Quadra's discovery: "The Schooner Sonora followed the coast down to Bodega Bay, so named at this time in honor of Bodega y Quadra." 1 The question of the precise location of the Sonora's anchorage was investigated in 1926 by Henry R. Wagner, who concluded that it was just inside Bodega Harbor entrance.2 This determination was accepted by other historians and has persisted to the present. This study reviews the evidence for the location of the Sonora's anchorage and the original assignment of Bodega y Quadra's name