If you visit the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center, you'll see lots of maps depicting Florida's history.
And now, one on display there from 1524 ... yes, 500 years ago ... is the first to ever show Florida.
WUSF’s Sky Lebron met up with Tom Touchton, the library's namesake, and Rodney Kite-Powell, who runs the library, to talk about this important piece.
What can you tell us about the map?
Rodney Kite-Powell: Long story short, Hernan Cortes has captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in the name of Spain. So It’s kind of the birth of Mexico. And so he wrote a letter to King Charles V explaining why he did what he did. And with that letter is a map. It’s actually a two-part map. The larger part — and the part that most of the world would be focused on — is the first ever view of any city in North America, and that is of Tenochtitlan, today’s Mexico City, or the core of Mexico City. Next to that, which is what we're really interested in, is the first printed map to show the name Florida, here depicted as La Florida, as well as the most accurate and most complete printed depiction of the Gulf of Mexico up to that point.
Does this show any distinguishing features of our local area here in Tampa Bay? I guess the Gulf is the closest thing we get to it?
Well, no. Maybe surprisingly, maybe not. And you got to take everything you see on these early maps with a grain of salt. But looking at the west coast of Florida, there are two pretty distinct bays, as there are today. There's Charlotte Harbor and there is Tampa Bay. When you look at the length of the Florida peninsula on this map and the location of about midway where Tampa Bay would be, they came pretty close.
How rare is it to see firsts like this? Is this generally a pretty unique and rare thing?
RKP: This map is quite rare. This book is quite rare. And so the printing process is a wood block, wood block prints. And by their very nature, those wood blocks can only be printed so many times before they break. So there are about 20 copies or so of this map that exist today.
Tom, a question for you. I mean, as somebody that collects maps constantly. One, were you involved in this process at all? And two, How exciting is it to see something like this?
Tom Touchton: Well, it's very exciting. And the map was offered to the History Center by a map dealer in London with whom I've had a relationship for many years. And he offered this map to us before offering it to others, because he knew that this was a kind of item that should be at the Tampa Bay History Center.
How does something like this get preserved for 500 years, even if it's not the original copy?
RKP: And this is the original copy. This is 500 years old that we're looking at right here. The simple answer is paper quality. Paper quality today, and really since the late 19th century, has been all about making paper as fast and as cheap as possible. And that basically is using wood pulp. This paper is a cotton rag, and so it is much, much more durable.
This one map is part of a larger collection, which has a lot of maps of Florida, the Caribbean, and just mapping the sea around North America. So can you tell me what this adds to that collection?
RKP: Our idea for the exhibition was really to recast our part of the United States, the southern part of the United States, but particularly Florida, particularly the Gulf Coast, and in its context, within American history. American history is taught basically from the English perspective. But that's kind of like starting your history on chapter two. And so what we wanted to do is, as far as the recorded history — of course, the indigenous history that goes back thousands of years prior to Europeans arrival is its own very important history — but in thinking about the recorded history of what is now the United States, and the 500 years or so of European history, chapter one really is here in Florida.
As a couple Florida historians, or the word I just came up with right now, Flori-storians, do you have any beef with historians that maybe don't refer to this enough?
RKP: I think yes, to some degree, because trained historians should know to look for some of those earliest time points. You can the bias that is inherent in people's retelling of stories. The subjective nature that people have and how in their their storytelling when they ignore Florida.
Tom, how about people that say 'I kind of find maps boring.' What would you say to them?
TT: Interestingly, number one, I have never had anyone say that to me. Usually is just the opposite. Number two, Google Maps do a very good job of getting you from one place to another place, but Google Maps don't really tell stories. So many of the maps that that we now see at the Tampa Bay History Center, they are telling the history story of Florida, which a Google map is not going to tell.
