Mapping Early Florida
Three Centuries of Cartographers Trying to Capture a Peninsula That Refused to Hold Still
Every map of Florida is a document of what its maker knew and did not know.
Look at an early map of Florida and something is strange. The coastline is recognizable, the Gulf shore curving, the Keys reaching southwest, the Atlantic coast angling toward Georgia. Someone has sailed these waters and written down what they saw. But the interior dissolves into guesswork. Rivers run in directions that no river actually runs, lakes appear that do not exist, and the deeper into the peninsula a cartographer reached, the more the map reveals not knowledge but its absence.
The Spanish Maps
Juan Ponce de León’s 1513 voyage is the best-known early Spanish landfall on Florida’s coast, and pilots who followed filled in the outline with increasing accuracy. Some historians argue Florida appears on still-earlier charts, notably the Cantino planisphere (about 1502), though scholars are roughly divided on whether the landmass it shows is Florida. By the mid-sixteenth century, European maps showed a recognizable Florida, including the Keys and the position of Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor.
The interior was another matter. Dense vegetation, seasonal flooding and the resistance of Native peoples such as the Timucua, Apalachee and Calusa limited European travel inland. Hernando de Soto’s expedition of 1539 to 1543 is known mainly through participants’ narratives rather than precise maps, and historians continue to debate its exact route.
Le Moyne’s Map
Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, an artist who accompanied the French Huguenot expedition to Florida in 1564 and 1565, made drawings and a map of the Timucua country and the rivers of northeastern Florida. The map was engraved and published in 1591 by Theodor de Bry, after le Moyne’s death. His original manuscript map is not known to survive. The engraving was influential but contains notable inaccuracies, including the shape of the peninsula and the placement of a large inland lake.
Bernard Romans
Britain acquired Florida from Spain in 1763 and set about improving its knowledge of the territory. Bernard Romans, a Dutch-born naturalist and surveyor, began surveying the coastal waters of East Florida in 1769 and reached Pensacola in 1771. His charts of the Florida coasts, issued in 1774, were primarily navigational, showing soundings, sailing directions and coastal features. Later accounts have considered his work better than any produced before. His depiction of the interior was less detailed.
Army Maps
The Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers, authorized in 1838, produced maps of Florida during the Second Seminole War and in the years after. Officers were directed to survey their routes of march and record rivers, lakes, swamps and military posts. A well-known example is the 1839 Map of the Seat of War in Florida, compiled by Captain John Mackay and Lieutenant Jacob E. Blake from the surveys of Army officers. Such maps were working military documents.
The Land Survey
Alongside military mapping ran the federal survey of public lands. In Florida the township-and-range grid survey began in 1824, when the Tallahassee Meridian and base line were established. Surveyors measured lines with chains, marked corner trees, and recorded soil, vegetation and timber. The State Archives of Florida holds Surveyor General field notes covering 1824 to 1890, and those notes are used by historians and ecologists studying Florida’s landscape before settlement. The grid remains visible today in section-line roads and property lines.
Reading an Early Map
The errors on an early map are as informative as the accuracies. A precise coast with a vague interior shows that knowledge came by sea, not by land. Florida Memory, the Library of Congress and the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History hold digitized maps that can be read in sequence, from Spanish charts to British surveys to Army maps to land plats, and show Florida coming into focus over three centuries.
Quick Facts
Earliest possible depictions
Cantino planisphere (about 1502); historians are divided on the identification
Ponce de León
1513 voyage along Florida’s coasts
De Soto
1539 to 1543; route debated
Le Moyne map
Voyage 1564–65; engraved by de Bry in 1591; original not known to survive
Bernard Romans
Surveys from 1769; charts issued 1774
Topographical Engineers
Corps authorized 1838
1839 Army map
Map of the Seat of War in Florida, by Mackay and Blake
Federal land survey
Began in Florida in 1824 with the Tallahassee Meridian
Surveyor General records
Field notes covering 1824 to 1890 at the State Archives of Florida
Where to see maps
Florida Memory, Library of Congress, P.K. Yonge Library
Did You Know?
- Le Moyne’s original map is not known to survive; we know it through a 1591 engraving.
- Romans’s 1774 coastal charts show soundings and sailing directions.
- The township-and-range grid begun in 1824 is still visible in many Florida section-line roads.
Vocabulary
Planisphere: a map of the world or a large part of it drawn on a flat surface.
Plat: a map showing the divisions of a piece of land.
Meridian: a north–south reference line used as a starting point for surveys.
Discussion Questions
1. Why were coasts mapped long before Florida’s interior?
2. What can the mistakes on an old map tell us about how it was made?
Related Articles
- FLH-0109 — Military Roads
- FLH-0112 — River Travel
Sources
Florida Memory. State Library and Archives of Florida. “A Guide to Researching the Territorial Era” (Surveyor General records). floridamemory.com
University of South Florida Libraries, Florida Maps Collection. “Map, Seat of War in Florida” (Mackay and Blake, 1839). digitalcommons.usf.edu
Romans, Bernard. A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida. New York, 1775.
Goss, John. The Mapping of North America: Three Centuries of Map-Making 1500–1860. Wellfleet Press, 1990 (catalog record confirmed; not independently examined)
Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records. glorecords.blm.gov (not independently examined)
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