A decade after Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, explorers were still speculating about the contours of the New World. Although today’s experts remain uncertain about when, exactly, Europeans first set foot in La Florida, cartographers began to sketch the outlines of the peninsula by the early 1500s. By 1511, a historian named Peter Martyr labeled the unknown land north of Cuba “Isla de Beimeni,” the native Indian name for what is now Florida.

Martyr’s map is just one of more than 150 maps featured in Charting the Land of Flowers: 500 Years of Florida Maps, opening Sept. 21 at the Tampa Bay History Center. The most comprehensive exhibition of Florida cartography ever presented, Charting the Land of Flowers traces six centuries of Florida history, bringing together maps from museum and library collections around the world, many of which will be on view to the public for the first time.

Marking the quincentenary of Ponce de León’s 1513 landing on Florida’s shores, the exhibit offers a rare opportunity to see the world as the early European explorers saw it, and to watch the peninsula that would become one of our county’s most populous and diverse states evolve before their eyes. They’ll also see that much of the earliest European exploration of North America occurred not in New England, but in Florida, while early railroad maps and travelogues show how the state became an agricultural powerhouse and America’s No. 1 tourist destination.

Intricate and often vibrant ― pink, red, and purple hues abound ― the early maps presented in Charting the Land of Flowers are as much works of art as they are historical documents. Together with atlases, military maps, and satellite images, they chart 500 years of exploration, settlement, and growth in The Land of Flowers.

Select maps featured in the exhibition:
•1513       Tabula Terre Nove; Portrays the world as it was known at the time of the Ponce de Leon’s Florida landing.
•1786       Maritime Observations in a Letter by Benjamin Franklin; Includes “A Chart of the Gulf Stream.”
•1864       “The Capture of Tampa Bay, Florida;” Shows the Union capture of Tampa.
•1917       American Automobile Association (AAA); Early Florida road map.
•2009       NASA view of Florida from Space, taken by astronaut and Clearwater native Nicole Stott.