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Texas Takes Shape

A History in Maps from the General Land Office
  • Mark Lambert , James Harkins , Brian A. Stauffer and Patrick Walsh
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025
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About this book

A comprehensive volume on historical mapping in Texas.

The Texas General Land Office’s map collection contains over 45,000 maps, some dating from the sixteenth century, making it one of the most important cartographic archives in Texas. As products and agents of history drawn by cartographers with motives and means as diverse as the places they document, maps provide a unique perspective on geopolitical, cultural, and economic processes. The maps of the GLO offer key insights into Texas’s sprawling history. They speak to issues of changing borders, social and political upheaval, and questions of sovereignty and power.

Texas Takes Shape offers an illuminating selection from the GLO archive: over one hundred maps that tell—and sometimes obscure—the stories of European colonization, Spanish and Mexican rule, the Republic of Texas, and the modern US state. There are maps here of every scale, from the hemispheric visions of European explorers to individual survey plats. Accompanying essays offer fascinating lessons on topics ranging from Indigenous cartography to military and railroad mapmaking and frontier surveys. Artful and informative, Texas Takes Shape examines a unique place through the eyes and imaginations of those who sought to govern it, profit from it, understand it, and call it home.

Author / Editor information

Mark Lambert is the Senior Deputy Director for Heritage at the Texas General Land Office. James Harkins is the Deputy Director of Archives and Records. Brian A. Stauffer is the Director of Public Services and the author of Victory on Earth or in Heaven: Mexico’s Religionero Rebellion. Patrick Walsh is a research specialist.

Reviews

Texas Takes Shape is a beautifully illustrated and designed book of the most comprehensive map collection relating to Texas. Texas is unique in the Union in that it retained ownership of its public land, and this book makes clear that the creative and judicious use of that land is, in many ways, the creation story of present-day Texas.
— Ron Tyler, University of Texas at Austin, author of Texas Lithographs: A Century of History in Images

Texas Takes Shape is an astoundingly beautiful work of visual history. Surveying the Texas past through more than a hundred historical maps, this collection offers readers a remarkable new window into how individuals and empires have imagined, explored, and fought over the lands that became Texas. For anyone interested in understanding how maps have literally shaped the modern landscape of Texas, this is an absolute must-read.
— Andrew J. Torget, University of North Texas, author of Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850

Texas Takes Shape is both a guide to the extensive and ever-increasing map collection of the Texas General Land Office and a remarkable study of maps of Texas and the Southwest. This handsome and colorful volume is a pleasure for the eye of the book collector but also a treat for the reader who wants to understand how maps framed understandings of the state and the region over several centuries.
— Kenneth Hafertepe, Baylor University, author of The Material Culture of German Texans

Four members of the GLO’s staff have selected more than one hundred [historical Texas maps] for inclusion in a stunning new volume, Texas Takes Shape...The result is that rarest of birds: a coffee-table book that advances an argument...The authors’ provocative thesis—that maps not only reflect the past but have influenced it too—puts Texas Takes Shape into conversations about books by scholars and critics as well.
— Texas Monthly

What’s missing from your Texas history bookshelf? How about a gorgeous volume of old maps that helped define and develop our state, that also includes cogent historical context for each image?...This magnificent book cajoles the reader to linger over every page with a magnifying glass in hand. You don’t want to miss any of the telling details.
— Austin American-Statesman

[This book is] a comprehensive analysis of historical mapping in Texas from the early 16th century to today…presented in a way to take readers on a journey through history that defines and develops Texas through centuries of research and preservation…[It’s] ‘a perfect gift for every Texan out there.’
— Temple Daily Telegraph

Detailed, artistic maps tell the story of Texas’s evolving borders and landscapes. Great for history buffs, designers, and fans of vintage cartography.

— 365 Things Austin

Each map is beautifully rendered and the accompanying essay is engrossing.

— Denton Record-Chronicle

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    1
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  • Publicly Available

    Contents

    6
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    LIST OF MAPS

    8
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    FOREWORD

    10
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    PREFACE

    13
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    INTRODUCTION

    16
  • PART I. Defining TEXAS
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    Chapter 1. Mapping the New World

    22
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    Chapter 2. Competing Empires

    58
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    Chapter 3. Mapping Mexico

    94
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    Chapter 4. The Lone Star Rises

    126
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    Chapter 5. “The Republic of Texas is no more”

    156
  • PART II. Developing TEXAS
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    Chapter 6. Contested Frontier

    208
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    Chapter 7. Connecting a Continent

    236
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    Chapter 8. All Boundaries Are Local

    262
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    Chapter 8. The Growth and Urbanization of Texas

    288
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    INDEX

    342
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    ABOUT THE AUTHORS

    359

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
June 12, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781477330937
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
https://doi.org/10.7560/330920
eBook ISBN: 9781477330937
Keywords for this book
The Texas General Land Office (GLO); cartographic history; Texas archives; cartography; Texas history; southwestern history; mapping; maps of Texas
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
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