Map of the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company and Connections

1917 map of the Seaboard Air Line Railway, though not an airplane in sight!

Organized as a conglomeration of 19 smaller companies in 1900, the Seaboard Air Line Railway operated across the southeastern United States until 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime rival, to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. The name is somewhat of a marketing gimmick, supposedly reflecting the directness of the route – as if flying through the air – and thus preferable to less-efficient competitors.

This map was printed by the Matthews-Northrup Works of Buffalo in 1917 and shows the lines and connections in operation between Norfolk and Richmond in the north (with a steamship line to Baltimore), Birmingham and Montgomery in the east, and Jacksonville and Tampa Bay in the south. Dozens of stops are labeled along each route, requiring that the shapes of certain states be distorted and enlarged within the image. (Compare the size of Wisconsin to that of Georgia and Alabama). Competitors’ routes, both railroads and steamships, are shown in diminutive black lines; but even so, there is an evident disparity in the size of transportation networks across the Midwest and New England vs. that of the South.

Of notable interest is the Florida East Coast Railway, with its extension to Key West (sometimes known as ‘Flagler’s Folly’) completed about five years prior to publication. The connection made for a convenient point of debarkation for much of the Caribbean, increasing its popularity as a tourist destination in the early decades of the 20th century.