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Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, a Spanish navigator of the 16th century, noted for having led an early expedition to the peninsula of Baja California, meant to be coordinated with Francisco Vasquéz de Coronado's overland expedition, and for penetrating the lower Colorado River, perhaps as far as the modern California-Arizona boundary.
Little is known about Alarcón's life outside of his expedition in New Spain. He set sail on May 9, 1540 with orders from the Spanish Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza to await at a certain point on the coast the arrival of an expedition by land under the command of Coronado.
He sailed into the Gulf of California, which had been explored the previous summer by Francisco de Ulloa. He made a careful survey of the coast, and ascended the Colorado (then called the Rio del Tizon or Rio de Buena Guia) for 85 Spanish miles. The meeting with Coronado was not effected, however, although Alarcón reached the appointed place and left letters, which were soon afterwards found by Melchior Diaz, another explorer.
Alarcón was the first to determine with certainty that Baja California was a peninsula and not an island, as had been supposed. Upon his return to New Spain in 1541 he constructed a more accurate map of California depicting it correctly as a peninsula. Nevertheless, since the new cartographic information went unpublished, the notion of the Island of California persisted on many European maps well into the 18th century.