president of the American Historical Association, and his presidential address, "The Epic of Greater America," he laid out his vision of hemispheric history, which has later been called the "Bolton Theory." In 1937 Bolton examined the recently discovered Drake's Plate of Brass and called it authentic proof that Sir Francis Drake had landed on the California coast in 1579. Later analysis in 1977 demonstrated conclusively that the plate was a forgery. Portland State University archaeologist, Melissa Darby, maintained Bolton knew it was a forgery but took part in a deliberate deception to support his contention that Drake landed somewhere near San Francisco Bay. Bolton’s biographer, Albert Hurtado, conceded that Bolton may have been careless in his assessment of the brass plate but doubted that the world-renowned historian would deliberately risk his reputation. The hoax may well have been perpetrated by colleagues of Bolton's, who planted the fake to just to prank him. But the joke went horribly wrong when Bolton mistakenly and publicly authenticated it. His doctoral students include Woodrow Borah, John W. Caughey, LeRoy R. Hafen, Abraham P. Nasatir, J. Fred Rippy, and Ursula Lamb. In 1944 retired as a professor at Berkeley. He taught briefly at San Francisco State College in retirement. He died of a stroke in Berkeley, California, in 1953. Honors President, American Historical Association 1932 Bolton Hall on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is named after him. Bolton taught there when it was the Milwaukee State Normal School in the late nineteenth century. The Conference on Latin American History, the professional organization of Latin American historians in the U.S., affiliated with the American Historical Association, established the annual Herbert Eugene Bolton Prize for the best book in English on Latin American history. Legacy Bolton is best known for his research on Spanish colonial history in the Spanish-American borderlands and his vision of an integrated history of the Americas. Biographer Kathleen Egan Chamberlain argues: His writings, particularly The Spanish Borderlands, still challenge traditional views of colonial and frontier history. They raise significant questions, such as the role of frontier on Spanish institutions and Spanish-Indian versus Anglo-Indian relations. The search for common historical elements between North and South America remains an open subject, and the call for greater hemispheric history has yet to be answered. Bolton taught enthusiastically until 1953 when he died at the age of 82, and left hundreds of graduate students, who