Rediscovery and Modern Scholarship

Interest in the 1764 map of John de Solis has grown among historians and collectors in recent decades. While only a handful of authenticated copies are known to exist, the map’s significance lies not in its rarity but in its representation of a critical phase in American and Spanish mapping.

Scholars have examined it alongside contemporary maps by Joseph de Evia, Vicente Doz, and Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, noting similarities in style and purpose. These maps collectively illustrate the transition from Baroque ornamentation to Enlightenment precision, marking the emergence of cartography as a rational science.

Archival research suggests that a version of Solis’s 1764 map was stored in the archives of Seville’s Casa de la Contratación, Spain’s great maritime bureaucracy. Later copies may have found their way into colonial offices in Havana or Veracruz, where they influenced regional planning.

Cartographic Legacy in the Gulf and Florida

The legacy of the Solis map endures in the way later cartographers conceived of the Gulf and Florida. Its delineation of coastlines and settlements provided a framework for subsequent surveys, including those conducted by Spanish and American engineers in the early nineteenth century.

When the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, American surveyors benefited from the cartographic groundwork laid by figures like Solis. His representation of rivers, inlets, and coastal defenses informed both navigation and settlement patterns. Even if later maps corrected his inaccuracies, his influence persisted as part of the cumulative evolution of geographic knowledge. shutdown123