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I obtained a map of a South-East SF Bay.

Officially it is Page 8 of San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont, Berkeley set, compiled by the Soviet Main Intelligence Department of General Staff (ГРУ ГШ) in 1976.

It has a few funny mistakes (e.g. SLAC is marked as an Industrial Enterprise). One thing baffled me seriously. An area enclosed between San Antonio Road and Castro Street, and El Camino Real and Alma Street, is marked as Castro City. The city of Mountain View, according to the map, is East of Castro Street.

Here is a relevant part:

enter image description here

The boldface at the top left says Кастро Сити (Castro City). The boldface at the bottom right says Маунтин Вью (Mountain View).

I know very well of a California Castro family. However I have never heard of a Castro City before. Can anybody shed some light?

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    Does this help? Castro Family History | Castro & Rengstorff Park and CASTRO CITY
    – Lars Bosteen
    Commented Dec 18, 2021 at 6:49
  • How is this about history? The single link to show this on openstreetmap: openstreetbrowser.org/#map=15/37.4025/-122.1036
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Dec 18, 2021 at 12:38
  • @LаngLаngС - How this neighbourhood ended with that name is an historical question. The question title, however, is a bit misleading because it can be understood as a different question that, in this case, has a non historical answer.
    – Pere
    Commented Dec 18, 2021 at 12:54
  • @user58697 Could you clarify the title? If you feel it could be misleading or could be understood as a different question, could you revise the title to clearly ask what you want to know, and attract the right sort of researchers to your question?
    – MCW ♦
    Commented Dec 18, 2021 at 13:08
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    Well, that line of reasoning should be in the question (and isn't clear to me even now, since the pic lacks sharpness). And still I miss prior research: whether you compared that one old map with other maps, either older, as old or newer than the one above, to answer this. Don't trust any one piece of info, compare, always.
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Dec 20, 2021 at 9:16

1 Answer 1

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This seems to be 1:50000 (or maybe even 1:25000?) map. That would likely mean that top-level labels will be district subdivisions, and both Castro-City and Mountain View were seen as districts within larger San Francisco area. District divisions on these soviet maps sometimes do not fit with actual administrative divisions on locations; for example, I've seen a similar map of Paris with districts named "Boulogne" and "Billancourt" - whereas actually it would be one commune named "Boulogne-Billancourt". Why map-makers decided to elevate a small neighborhood to the same level as Mountain View - might be a mistake in information-gathering, might be an attempt to put more toponyms on the map for ease of navigation? Anyway, it is not indicative of marked area being an actual city/town/whatever at any point in its history.

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  • It is 1:25000 indeed
    – user58697
    Commented Dec 24, 2021 at 18:09

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