An American Indian woman left behind during an evacuation in 1835 lived alone on a remote island off the coast of California for 18 years, inspiring the children’s novel Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Named Karana in Scot O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island’s native name is not known. She was part of the Nicoleño tribe that inhabited the island, the most remote of the Channel Islands at 61 miles off the coast of California, for some 10,000 years.