1924 Clason Map of Florida Promoting Orwin Manor, Orlando and Winter Park

This is the c. 1924 Clason folding road map of Florida. It corresponds with the 1920s Florida Land Boom and was issued to promote real estate development in the Orwin Manor neighborhood of Orlando and Winter Park.

A Closer Look

Coverage includes all of Florida, with the west Florida panhandle depicted via an inset. The map details major roadways throughout the state and roads under construction, such as the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades from Miami. These and other highways (whose road signage appears at left) facilitated Florida's tourist and real estate boom in the 1920s. Just to the north of the Tamiami Trail is the Seminole Indian Reservation known as 'Big Cypress.' A grid surrounds the map, with the coordinates and signage of national trails and other posted roads listed in a legend below the title. The coordinates and populations of larger towns and cities are provided in an index below the map.

Orwin Manor

This map was issued in multiple editions, many with overprinting, verso printing, illustrations, and covers used to highlight various real estate developments and communities. The present example was issued to promote Orwin Manor, a development and now neighborhood in the northern part of Orlando and neighboring Winter Park. The development, a combination of the names of the cities it spans, was launched by the Central Florida Development Company in 1924, with the first homes built in 1925. Walter Rose, whose Land Investment Company is noted on the cover, was the president of the Central Florida Development Company and later a Florida State Senator. The development was a quick success, though its progress was halted by the crash of the Florida Land Boom at the end of the decade, and it was not fully developed until after World War II.

Florida Land Boom

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Florida experienced a series of land booms and crashes; the most well-known of these occurred in the 1920s. The collapse of a previous land boom that established Florida as a center for the citrus industry in the 1880s - 1890s allowed for the easy acquisition of large tracts of land at cut-rate prices. Industrialist and founder of Standard Oil Henry Flagler (1830 - 1913) seized the opportunity to build his Florida East Coast Railway and extend it to the region that would develop into Miami and other communities on the state's southeastern coast.

Flagler and other boosters of the region successfully promoted it as a paradisical escape from the grimy cities and cold weather of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Land prices shot up at an astronomical rate, and developers carved entirely new cities out of wetlands in mere months. In addition to Flagler's railway, the arrival of the highway system and associated businesses (gas stations, motels, restaurants, etc.) in the 1920s made the region more easily accessible. However, the speculation around land prices in Florida had reached irrational heights, and the damage caused by two hurricanes, followed by the financial crash of 1929, led to a collapse in the real estate market, ruining many investors in the process.

Publication History and Census

This map was printed by the Clason Map Company. It was issued in many editions - the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center has no fewer than 13. Although undated, we have been able to tentatively date this map between 1920 and 1922, when the Tamiami Trail was under construction, though this particular example would not have been issued until 1924 or later, as the Orwin Manor Development was not launched until then.