In the rolling lakes and pine woods of what is now Central Florida, the year 1834 marked a moment of fragile transformation. The region was still part of a vast American frontier—technically organized, politically claimed, but physically wild and sparsely inhabited. It was a time when Seminole villages thrived along rivers, when settlers began st

The Map of Florida (1833) is a relic of a world in flux, yet its legacy continues. It reminds us that maps are more than neutral representations—they are instruments of power, imagination, and memory. Tanner’s work shaped how Americans of his generation envisioned their southern frontier. To later viewers, the map stands as a piece of visual hi

Beyond geography, Tanner’s map conveys the economic imagination of early nineteenth-century America. Florida’s depiction as a territory rich in rivers, timber, and arable land aligned with contemporary promotional literature aimed at settlers and investors. Land speculators and government officials used maps like Tanner’s to envision plantati

Like many cartographers of his time, Tanner did not personally survey Florida. Instead, he compiled his map from a variety of sources—government surveys, explorers’ journals, naval charts, and earlier Spanish and British maps. The Surveyor General’s Office of Florida, established after the American acquisition, provided updated data that Tann