Archival Links: Maps

Back to Main Archives Page

See also: Digitized Colonial Maps of Spanish Florida / Digitized Geographic Descriptions of Spanish Florida / Digitized Post-Colonial Maps of Spanish Florida / Spanish Florida Places / Archival Links: Maps

The archival links below focus on sites predominantly containing maps and other land records, including both historical and modern maps, for purposes of comparison. Many archival repositories on the main Archival Links page also contain maps and other land records, but the links below are a good place to start.


Historical Maps / Historical Aerial and Satellite Imagery / Modern Maps

Historical Maps

Old Maps Online (a great map interface with the ability to search within a specific historical timeline for freely available maps online through a wide range of institutional partners)

Florida General Land Office Records (digital imagery of early Florida land plats and field notes on the LABINS site, searchable by Township and Range; see 1866 map index to section/range numbers here; see also my own compiled maps for specific regions of Spanish Florida here)

Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Records (digitized imagery of GLO records from all states that used this system, including Alabama [see 1878 map index here]; includes a different set of maps for Florida than those above)

Spanish Land Grants in Florida (digitized records relative to early land grants in Florida, from the State Archives of Florida)

Florida Historical Map Collections (large database of map images from the Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida)

Historic Maps of Florida (high-resolution digital images of many historical maps from Florida and elsewhere; part of the David Rumsey Map Collection, which also has a really amazing and easy-to-use online Georeferencer for all its maps, as well as a selection of historical maps placed as a layer in Google Earth)

Old Florida Maps (a nice selection of historic Florida map images, grouped chronologically; hosted by the University of Miami Libraries)

Exploring Florida Maps (a categorized selection of Florida maps and map sections from a website for social studies teachers)

Georgia's Virtual Vault (among digitized collections are Historic Maps and Headright and Bounty Plats and District Plats of Survey with digital scans of 18th- and 19th-century land plats, along with District Survey Field Notebooks)

Louisiana State Museum Historical Map Collection (a nice selection of historic state and regional maps; downloadable)

USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (scanned images of historical topographic maps; includes a map interface; see also a selection of maps I assembled from the Pensacola area here).

Office of Coast Survey, Historical Map & Chart Project (searchable NOAA database with digital images of OCS coastal charts from the 18th-20th centuries; modern charts available here)

Hargrett Library Rare Map Collection, Univ. of Georgia (extensive online imagery)

Library of Congress Map Collections (extensive online imagery, hosted at the American Memory site)

North Carolina Maps (an excellent and large collection of high-resolution historical maps of the Carolinas and surrounding regions, including some that show Spanish Florida)

Alabama Maps Collection (digitized maps available through the Digital Collections of the Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Archival Materials (an excellent and extensive collection of digitized maps and texts from the colonial Southeast, maintained by Vin Steponaitis at UNC Chapel Hill; contains Early Maps of the American South, including the complete Crown Collection of Photographs of American Maps)

British Library (many digitized maps available on the Flickr photostream; advanced search for the term "florida" can be found here, and other searches can be run from this page as well)

Selections from the d'Anville Collection, Bibliothèque Nationale (good selection of online French colonial map imagery, linked from the Library of Congress, Global Gateway)

Inventory of the Louis Charles Karpinski Collection (a detailed inventory of an extensive colonial map collection dating from 1500-1799; the original map copies from diverse archives are located in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California)

Harvard Map Collection: Digital Maps (searchable imagery of maps, including many direct links to the Rumsey Collection, but also other historical map images in the Harvard collection)

Princeton Library Digital Maps and Geospatial Data (great map interface leading to a large number of scanned historical maps of regions selected by geographic location and scale within the viewing box)

Sydney R. Knafel Map Collection at Phillips Academy (a very nice collection of historical maps digitized online)

Historical Maps of Pennsylvania (great and well organized site with digital images of a broad range of early colonial maps of Pennsylvania and the eastern Atlantic seaboard region)

Historical Maps and Atlases of U.S. and States (great genealogy-focused site that includes detailed interactive county formation maps for all states including Florida and others)

New York Public Library Maps of North America (great collection of digitized maps from all over North America)

Early Maps of the American South (part of an extensive and well-organized collection of digital imagery and bibliographic source references for French colonial Louisiana, maintained by Vin Steponaitis at UNC-Chapel Hill)

Historical Aerial & Satellite Imagery

Aerial Photography: Florida (online digital imagery of historic USDA aerial photos dating as early as the 1930s; hosted by UF's Smathers Libraries Map & Imagery Library)

Aerial Photography: Georgia (online digital imagery of historic USDA aerial photos dating as early as the 1930s; includes the Georgia Aerial Photography Index Collection as well as the database of original images of Georgia Aerial Photographs; hosted in part by the UGA Science Library)

Air Photo Archive: Alabama (online digital imagery of historic USDA aerial photos dating as early as the 1930s, including county mosaics and original images; hosted by UA's Alabama Maps page)

LandLook (USGS page with map access to Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery from 1972 onward)

Landsat Imagery (NASA page with links to several online sources of Landsat imagery)

Modern Mapping

USGS National Map (nationwide map viewer with many layers and downloadable data; includes geology, topography, hydrology, vegetation, etc.; also see USGS topoBuilder to create custom topographic maps not restricted by the old 7.5 minute map boundaries; see also the USGS Data and Tools website containing Mapping, Remote Sensing, and Geospatial Data)

USGS topoBuilder (interface to create custom topographic maps)

NOAA: Digital Coast (site with lots of coastal mapping data, including types below)

Coastal Topographic LIDAR (data downloads, such as for Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties, Florida)

National Geodetic Survey Datasheet Page (includes map interface and individual search engines leading to detailed elevation information for terrestrial benchmarks; also includes searches for tidal benchmark datasheets)

Web Soil Survey (USDA website allowing users to construct their own customizable soil survey map/report for virtually any locale in the United States; includes map interface)

National Geological Map Database (nationwide coverage of geological maps and publications; includes map interface)

Office of Coast Survey (NOAA site with access to modern coastal charts; includes map interface)

Geospatial Data (centralized Data.Gov website with direct access to extensive US government geospatial datasets)

LABINS (Land Boundary Information System for the state of Florida; includes digital USGS topographic maps for the entire state; also see map interface)

Top of Page