Just realized the 1955 map of Florida forgot the whole Everglades region

I was digging through a box of old road maps my uncle left me, and found this 1955 Shell map where the bottom half of Florida is basically empty. No Everglades, no Miami suburbs, just a blank patch labeled "swamp" and the keys stop halfway down. I looked it up and apparently the map company used outdated survey data from the 30s for that area, which blows my mind because by 1955 people were already building there. Two ways to look at it: either the map company was just lazy and nobody caught it for decades, or the cartographers figured nobody would ever actually drive down there so why bother with detail. I can see both sides honestly. One screwup like this and you wonder what else on that map is off, but also back then getting a full state surveyed was a huge job and costs mattered. Has anyone else found a map with a whole region just missing or wildly wrong, not just a misplaced border? How do you decide if it's a genuine mistake or a deliberate shortcut?

0 comments

0 Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.