1876 Northeast Florida Map (Hanging)

This Northeast Florida map, printed on high-quality matte paper and easy to hang, is from the 1876-1877 edition of Whitney's Florida Pathfinder, an early annual publication describing all the important sites and sights in Florida "for the Tourist and Invalid." The invalids referred to were people coming south for health reasons.

Whitney's guide was heavily weighted toward NE Florida for one simple reason: other parts of the state had hardly been developed yet. This guide was issued five years before Henry Flagler first visited Florida, and he was of course responsible for much of the early development of the state via his investment in hotels and railroads all over the state.

There is a mountain of history in this one little map, from the little towns in Duval county such as Riverside, Mandarin, and Arlington that were one separate towns before being consumed by Jacksonville in 1968. There's the once-important spot on the St. Johns river called Tocoi, where riverboats would discharge passengers for the trip, at first by stagecoach but by the time of this map rail car, for the final leg to Saint Augustine.

Picolata, just north of Tocoi, appears in many early writings and was the site of an important Spanish fort, later destroyed by the British. The Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine was at this point called Fort Marion, and you can see the "Old Fort" farther south (Fort Matanzas today).

There was no real train service to Saint Augustine yet - that would come 8 years late - just the line to and from the Tocoi Landing, which before the Civil War used mules to pull the cars along the tracks, really a tram, not a train. But by now in 1876, wood-burning steam engines moved the train east and west along the line.

Coming into 1876, when this map was published, the US was about to celebrate its centennial. Ulysses S. Grant's presidential term was about to enter its final year. In January, all native Americans were ordered onto reservations, and in February the The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was formed.

This beautiful historic image is printed on museum-quality, 110-pound matte paper that is acid-free, ensuring that it will last many years without any yellowing or discoloration beyond what has been preserved from the original. It has wooden bars at top and bottom and is ready to hang.

Dimensions: 12”w x 18”h

Available as:

• quality print with hanger   THIS ONE
• print on birch wood