Florida Maps: Then & Now

This map shows land granted to Gomez by the Spanish government in the early 19th century. The grant included all of modern day Jupiter Island, from the St. Lucie River to the Jupiter Inlet.

Florida's cattle industry is the oldest in what is now the United States. Native American immigrants, later known as Seminoles, migrated into the area and began working the former Spanish livestock.

Long before concrete and steel spanned the St. Johns River near downtown Jacksonville, the Timucuan chief Saturiwa (Sat-ur-e-ba [IPA: Sæt-ur-ih-bah]) presided over the area shown on this map, from the confirmed Spanish Land Grant of Ezekiel Hudnall. This Westward bend in the St. Johns sits upstream from the French built Fort Caroline, destroyed and then rebuilt by the Spanish and christened Fort San Mateo in the 1560s.

Lounging green Iguanas, discarded pets imported from another land, bake in the sun, contrasting against the white limestone rocks along the New River in modern downtown Fort Lauderdale. This map, from the confirmed Spanish Land Grant of Lewis Frankee, shows the area at a much earlier time, when the winding river was frequented only intermittently by Seminole Indians and shipwreck victims.

This map, drawn by surveyor Robert McHardy, shows the confirmed Spanish Land Grant of Joseph M. Hernandez along the Matanzas River, a plantation he dubbed "Mala Compra." The river along the bottom, or West, edge of the map derives its name from events that took place at a nearby inlet in 1565, when Spaniards under the command of Pedro Menendez de Aviles massacred French Huguenots associated with the Fort Caroline settlement.

Key Biscayne is a long barrier island that sits just offshore of metropolitan Miami. This map, from the confirmed Spanish Land Grant of Mary Ann Davis, shows Key Biscayne long before dredging altered its shoreline, and causeways linked it to the mainland.