Until 1972 where was the "Gulf of America" located?

Until the late nineteenth century, the land bordering the Peter the Great Gulf in Russia’s Far East was largely uninhabited. In 1855, the Royal Navy ships HMS “Winchester” and HMS “Barracouta” discovered a bay within the Peter the Great Gulf at the north of the Sea of Japan. The British ships referred to this discovery as “Hornet Bay” and “Garnet Bay,” respectively.

On 17 June 1859, Governor-General Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky of Eastern Siberia led his corvette “America” into the same bay seeking shelter during a storm. He dropped anchor at present-day Nakhodka (see picture). The next morning, he logged a 4.8 km (three mile) inlet, naming it Nakhodka Bay. He ordered a map drawn that, for the first time, named the overall bay the Gulf of America, after his ship.

The first Russian settlement on the bay was established in 1906 and settled in 1907. The village was named Amerikanka after the bay. Some early arrivals refused to live in the settlement because they perceived its name as a reference to the United States, rather than the Governor-General’s ship. A port was developed at Nakhodka in the 1950s, followed by Vostochny Port in the 1970s on the other side of the Gulf of America.

In 1972, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic reapplied the name Nakhodka Bay to the entire Gulf of America, removing a perceived reference to the United States, a geopolitical rival of the Soviet Union, as part of a broader renaming of geographical objects in the Russian Far East.