The inclusion of major roads and projected canals reveals the anticipation of development. Tanner marked key transportation corridors connecting St. Augustine to Tallahassee and Pensacola, as well as trails leading south toward Tampa Bay. These were not yet full-fledged highways but aspirations drawn on parchment—lines of potential linking frontier settlements to the Atlantic world.
For the historian, Tanner’s map becomes a window into the mindset of Manifest Destiny before the term itself gained popularity. It illustrates how cartography and colonization worked hand in hand: to draw the map was to assert the right to occupy the land.
The Map as a Historical Source
Today, Tanner’s 1833 Map of Florida survives in archives, libraries, and private collections as a valuable historical artifact. Scholars use it to trace changes in settlement patterns, environmental conditions, and political boundaries. Comparing Tanner’s map with later ones—from the 1840s, 1850s, and after statehood in 1845—reveals the rapid transformation of the landscape.
For instance, by the 1850s, new counties had appeared, railroads began to cut through the interior, and large swaths of the Everglades were surveyed for reclamation. Tanner’s map stands as a “before” image—a portrait of Florida in its untamed youth, poised at the threshold of modernity.
Collectors prize Tanner’s maps for their artistry, but historians treasure them for their data. His maps document early American administrative geography, land ownership, and the intersection of cultural and physical landscapes. In this sense, Tanner was not only a cartographer but a chronicler of America’s unfolding story. shutdown123