1948 Blanton Pictorial Map of Brunswick and St. Simons Island, Georgia

This is a c. 1948 Virginia and Jack Blanton pictorial tourist map of Brunswick and St. Simons Island, Georgia. The map encapsulates the region's history and appeal as a tourist destination, combining historic information with notes concerning beaches, hotels, and illustrations of outdoor activities.

A Closer Look

Depicting from the Turtle River to the Atlantic Ocean, St. Simons Island, Little Saint Simons Island, Sea Island, and Brunswick, Georgia are illustrated. Created to entice tourists to the region, illustrations of hotels, golf courses, historic sites, and other locations fill the map. Ships and boats appear off the coast, including 'Old Ironsides' the USS Constitution, whose live oak timbers were cut on St. Simons Island. Portraits of important historical figures recount some of Georgia's history. Flags along the top border quickly summarize Georgia's colonial history as a French, Spanish, and English colony and its time in the Confederacy. Vignettes along the bottom border recount the history of the Spanish San Simon Mission that gives the island its name and the British victory in the Battle of Bloody Marsh. The third vignette notes that cotton plantations flourished on Sea Island during the Antebellum Era and is complete with a 'happy' (presumably enslaved) Black mother and children, one of whom is eating a watermelon (a classic racist trope).

Publication History and Census

This map was created by Virginia Blanton and Jake Blanton Jr. and published c. 1948 by the Chamber of Commerce of Brunswick, Georgia. We note a single cataloged example, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Another edition was published as a folding map with images and text on the verso. The preset edition, while folded, is blank on the verso.