St. Isabel

St. Isabel
A work by Reginald Routhwick
Type	Topographic map
Topics	Christopher Columbus, QGIS, Mapmaking, Worldbuilding, Caribbean, Greater Antilles
Setting(s)	North Atlantic Ocean
In development since	February 2017

St. Isabel, originally codenamed Paradise 60, is a map project by Reginald Routhwick.

Development

In February 2017, Routhwick moved from Waterbury, Connecticut to Tampa, Florida with his family. While unpacking in a rental home in Brandon suburb, he discovered that the enormous upper architecture of their living room could potentially double as the space for a brand new map. During those first days at this new residence, he measured the dimensions of this upper wall and drafted the sheet divisions on paper. Initially meant as a 12-sheet series for a single wall face, the setup soon became a triptych and morphed into "Paradise 60", after the number of 1:50,000 sheets it would take to cover the yet-to-be-named realm in question. Views of western Florida from the air while landing at Tampa International Airport served as inspiration for the realm's landscape.

On March 6, 2017, Routhwick sketched out the technical specifications of Paradise 60, which called for a grid system based on the Lambert Conformal Conic projection (modelled after Jamaica's "JAD2001"). The true origin was at 26.5° N, 70° W, and the false origin offset was 300,000 m west/150,000 m south. The layout was divided into six areas corresponding to the wall's, lettered A through F:

Area	Sheets	Dimensions		Area
		Sheets	Actual	Individual	Total
A	4 (1 × 4)	50 × 80 cm	25 × 40 km	1,000 km²	4,000 km²
B	20 (5 × 4)	90 × 90 cm	45 × 45 km	2,025 km²	81,000 km²
C	4 (2 × 2)	50 × 80 cm	25 × 40 km	1,000 km²	4,000 km²
D	12 (3 × 4)	80 × 90 cm	40 × 45 km	1,800 km²	21,600 km²
E	4 (2 × 2)	50 × 80 cm	25 × 40 km	1,000 km²	4,000 km²
F	16 (4 × 4)	70 × 70 cm	35 × 35 km	1,225 km²	19,600 km²
Total area					109,800 km²

In an update on March 9, the centre position was at 25° N, 70° W; the true origin at 23.5° N, 70° W; and the false origin 400,000 m westward. The southwestern corner of the revised survey area was 94.9 km away from San Salvador in the Bahamas.

At 1:25 a.m. on March 17, Routhwick dubbed this new country:

Saint Isabel

After the Queen who served

Spain during Columbus' voyages

to the New World

and its two provinces:

Colibri

(After Taino for

"hummingbird")

(Capital: Hillsborough)

Arrabuko

(After Taino for "forest";

literally "large place with trees")

(Capital: Woodfield)

At some point later on, "Arrabuko" became the similar-sounding "Arborado", Spanish for "forested".

Later that same day, he made a list of potential fonts for the map series; on the 19th, he drafted out a stylesheet. On the 24th, he sketched out a logo of the national television station, ZIBL. (Its design incorporated a stylised "b" whose ascender curved up to form an 8, the number of its channel position.

Since he had no computer at hand to do it at the time, he either had to make do with the resources of Brandon's Public Library, or manage the job top-secret with his stepfather's new PC. As with previous cartographic endeavours of his, he carried out his work on QGIS, trying out several different procedures that never panned out, and even devoted a Google+ Collection to it. Eventually, his efforts proved too time-consuming, and the project—par for the course—was set aside by around 2018 as other projects of his, and his focus on the G+ "#WhatLiesAground" feed, occupied his attention.

St. Isabel was never realised in its original design: When the Brandon rental lease was up in February 2019, so were Routhwick's ambitions. But he hardly lost hope of the potential; depending on the architecture of his family's next new home (eastward in Dover), he expressed on one of his last G+ posts that it might return in some form. Months after "Aground" transitioned to Steemit, he remarked that the project would be "smaller in scope" than once planned.

Though currently dormant in the wake of his other projects, St. Isabel is under consideration for a 2022–23 revival, and is listed for convenience on this wiki among Routhwick's current projects.

Description

Original writeups on St. Isabel appeared on Google+ until its April 2019 public closure. This profile is an incomplete rewrite for the time being, and details are subject to change or expansion over time.

St. Isabel is a West Indian island nation located 200 miles north of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles, named after the Queen who served Spain during the age of Columbus. It is split into two provinces, Colibri in the east and Arborado in the west. The seaside city of Hillsborough is Colibri's seat and the national capital, while Arborado is served by Woodfield.

St. Isabel was among the locales Columbus sighted halfway during his first voyage in November 1492. Thanks to the criticism his reputation has faced in recent decades, locals have petitioned that the nation be renamed.

The country boasts modest amounts of mineral resources, particularly gypsum, zinc, and quartz. Next to tourism and agriculture, they are among the largest contributors to its GDP.

St. Isabel's national television station, ZIBL-DT 8.1, is best known outside the Caribbean for the long-running sitcom Amelie's. A Caribbean localisation of the BBC's Fawlty Towers (via a short-lived American attempt, Amanda's), it managed to outlast both predecessors more than a dozen times over combined. Running from October 1984 till June 2011 for 540 episodes—20 per season—it became the world's longest-running show of its kind, a record since surpassed by animation's The Simpsons.

Tidbits

• Routhwick chose the name of Hillsborough as a nod to the Florida county where he is now based.