1925 Mid-West Map Company Tourist Road Map of Florida

This is a c. 1925 Mid-West Map Company tourist road map of Florida created as part of a series of maps promoting Authorized Guide and Map Stations across the country. It was produced at the height of the Florida Land Boom, when the state's road infrastructure expanded rapidly to accommodate travel to Miami, West Palm Beach, and other nearby towns.

A Closer Look

Thick dark lines highlight paved or graveled roads, including state highways, while dirt (earth) roads are also illustrated. Cities and towns are identified, while numbers indicate 'Authorized Guide and Map Stations' which are listed in a corresponding index on the verso. An inset at bottom-left is a continuation of the main map covering the Florida Panhandle.

Florida Land Boom

In the second half of the 19th and throughout the 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 in the 1920s made the region more easily accessible. But 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 created by the Mid-West Map Company c. 1925; the lack of a U.S. Route shield, instituted in 1926, precludes a later date. State Route 4 along the state's eastern coast was re-designated U.S. Route 1 in 1926, also supporting a date of 1925 or earlier. Therefore, this appears to be an early edition of the company's Florida highway map, likely the first, which was issued at least two more times in the following years with more advertising on the recto and updates to the highway numbering system as just noted (see, for example, the c. 1927 example previously sold by us). There are no other known examples of the present edition of this map in institutional collections or on the market, while later editions are held by the University of South Florida and the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center.