Full Description
A comprehensive volume on historical mapping in Texas.
The Texas General Land Office's map collection contains over 45,000 maps, some dating from the sixteenth century, making it one of the most important cartographic archives in Texas. As products and agents of history drawn by cartographers with motives and means as diverse as the places they document, maps provide a unique perspective on geopolitical, cultural, and economic processes. The maps of the GLO offer key insights into Texas's sprawling history. They speak to issues of changing borders, social and political upheaval, and questions of sovereignty and power.
Texas Takes Shape offers an illuminating selection from the GLO archive: over one hundred maps that tell-and sometimes obscure-the stories of European colonization, Spanish and Mexican rule, the Republic of Texas, and the modern US state. There are maps here of every scale, from the hemispheric visions of European explorers to individual survey plats. Accompanying essays offer fascinating lessons on topics ranging from Indigenous cartography to military and railroad mapmaking and frontier surveys. Artful and informative, Texas Takes Shape examines a unique place through the eyes and imaginations of those who sought to govern it, profit from it, understand it, and call it home.
Contents
List of Maps
Foreword by Dawn Buckingham
Preface
Introduction
Part I. Defining Texas
Chapter 1. Mapping the New World: An Age of Discovery
Beyond the Neatline-Uncovering the Base Layer: Indigenous Cartography in North America
Chapter 2. Competing Empires: Maps as Knowledge and Power, 1671-1830
Beyond the Neatline-Compasses and Crucifixes: Priests and Friars in the Mapping of Spanish North America
Chapter 3. Mapping Mexico: Uneven Geography
Beyond the Neatline-From the "Dead Desert" to the "Wonderland of Agriculture and Opportunity": Mapping the Nueces Strip 000:
Chapter 4. The Lone Star Rises: Maps of the Republic of Texas, 1835-1846
Beyond the Neatline-"A continued succession of abrupt sinuousities": The Joint Boundary Commission and the Republic of Texas, 1838-1841
Chapter 5. "The Republic of Texas is no more": The Lone Star State Takes Shape
Beyond the Neatline-The Art and Cartography of Eltea Armstrong
Part II. Developing Texas
Chapter 6. Contested Frontier: Pathfinders, Soldiers, and Military Maps
Beyond the Neatline-Land for Military Service: Bounty, Donation, and Confederate Scrip
Chapter 7. Connecting a Continent: Texas Land and the Expanding American Railroad System
Beyond the Neatline-Frontier Surveying in Texas
Chapter 8. All Boundaries Are Local: GLO County Maps
Beyond the Neatline-Drawing Conclusions: Manuscript Cartouches in the GLO
Chapter 9. The Growth and Urbanization of Texas: City Maps at the GLO
Beyond the Neatline-"Complete Success" to Obsolescence: The Photographic Bureau of the GLO, 1861-1874
Conclusions. Texas History on the Digital Frontier: Improving Access through Preservation
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Authors
