Florida Automobile Road Map

Ephemeral road map issued during the Florida Land Boom.

This rare promotional map of Florida was created by Motor Life in 1925 for distribution by the C.A. Roberts Real Estate Company. Headquartered in Orlando, the firm was hoping to capitalize on the public interest in automobile tourism, as well as rapidly increasing prices on local land values.

The image uses four types of lines to distinguish different road surfaces – hard, semi-hard, graded, and unimproved. Small numbers identify specific highway routes, an innovation introduced nationwide the same year as the publication. The inset of the southeastern U.S. in the lower left highlights the prior system of ‘named’ trails and highways. The verso presents a map of Orange County showing ‘Good Roads and Lakes.’

Several panels of favorable text and statistics highlight the many reasons to consider ‘The County Beautiful!’ One notable excerpt reads, “Development has been steady and rapid. There has been no boom. Realty values are on a sound, conservative basis.”

The map was issued near the end of the Florida Land Boom, sparked by the completion of the Florida East Coast Railway and the economic prosperity of the 1920s. The text may have been issued to combat contemporary criticism in the national press, which considered land values to be wildly inflated. An embargo on building materials, an unusually harsh winter in 1925, the 1926 Miami hurricane, and increasing scrutiny of unscrupulous business practices all led to a statewide real estate crash as precipitous as the rise in prices.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation;