Coronelli’s map designates what became eastern Texas as part of “La Florida” and the Mississippi River as flowing south through present Texas to empty into the Gulf of Mexico near the Rio Grande. This error resulted at least in part from the difficulty at the time of measuring longitude.
Senex’s English copy of a French map draws the border between French Louisiana and Spanish territory along the Rio Grande and the Pecos River, implying that most of Texas belonged to France. The New Mexico pueblos and villages along the upper Rio Grande appear too close to the east.
Designed for emigrants to Mexican Texas, Young and Mitchell’s map illustrates a number of empresario land grants, giving Texas a heart shape, with the Nueces River as the southern boundary.
U.S. Army Maj. William H. Emory’s 1844 map portrayed the borders of the independent nation of Texas according to its most flamboyant and grandiose claims. The additional area included sizable portions of the present states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming.
One of the first printed maps to show the former Texas republic and Mexican province as a state, it features distinct hand coloring to illustrate disputed areas (in yellow) claimed by both the Texas (and by then United States) and Mexican governments from the time of Texas independence in 1836 to the eve of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1846.
The state’s present external borders appear on this emigrant map, with the exception of a disputed county that is now in Oklahoma. By the time of the Compromise of 1850, Texas assumed its present shape, having given up territory north of the 36˚30’ parallel of north latitude in order to retain slavery. It also had relinquished claims to portions of New Mexico as a reward to the United States government for assuming the former republic’s massive debts. However, in 1860 the Legislature created Greer County with a northern border along the North Fork of the Red River instead of the South Fork, citing an old treaty. In 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court decided against Texas’ claim, and in 1906 the formerly disputed area became part of Oklahoma.
Texans know a thing or two about reinvention. And, it turns out, so does their state. The area now known as Texas experienced numerous permutations over the centuries before taking today’s familiar shape. The UT Arlington Library’s Special Collections traces that evolution through maps that show the state’s many shapes, names, and geographic oddities in the years before and after its settling.
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