Historical Texas maps
1519–1921 · 6 sovereign flags · 254 counties by 1921
The outline of Texas that everyone recognizes is younger than the state itself. Between the first Spanish charts of the Gulf coast and the last county line drawn in 1921, the map was redrawn by treaty, war, a land sale and four hundred years of surveying.
The modern outline, for comparison. The Panhandle's flat top at 36°30′, the straight western line at the 103rd meridian and the Rio Grande are each the product of a specific document below.
Dates that changed the map
| Year | Event | What it did to the map |
|---|---|---|
| 1519 | Álvarez de Pineda charts the Gulf | First European mapping of the Texas coast; the shoreline appears on Spanish charts before any interior detail |
| 1685 | La Salle builds Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek | A French claim on Matagorda Bay; Spain responds by occupying the interior |
| 1690 | Mission San Francisco de los Tejas | First Spanish mission in East Texas; the province of Tejas begins to be drawn as a unit |
| 1718 | Mission San Antonio de Valero and its presidio founded | Fixes the road between the Rio Grande and East Texas at what becomes San Antonio |
| 1729–1770s | Los Adaes serves as capital of Spanish Texas | The capital sits east of the Sabine, in present-day Louisiana — the province reached further east than the state does |
| 1803 | Louisiana Purchase | The United States becomes Spain's neighbor; the eastern limit of Tejas is disputed and left as a "Neutral Ground" |
| 1819 | Adams–Onís Treaty | Sets the Sabine River as the eastern boundary, then a stair-step of meridians and parallels north to the 42nd parallel |
| 1821 | Mexican independence | Tejas passes from Spain to Mexico; Anglo-American colonization begins under empresario grants |
| 1824 | Mexican constitution creates Coahuila y Tejas | Texas is not a state of its own but the northern department of a larger state governed from Saltillo, later Monclova |
| 1836 | Independence declared 2 March; Republic of Texas | A December boundary act claims the Rio Grande to its source and then due north to the 42nd parallel |
| 1841 | Santa Fe Expedition captured | The New Mexico half of the claim is never governed; maps of the period show claimed and controlled territory differently |
| 1845 | Annexation, 29 December | Texas becomes the 28th state and keeps its public lands, a condition no other state had |
| 1848 | Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | The Rio Grande becomes the international boundary, ending the Nueces claim |
| 1850 | Compromise of 1850 | Texas sells its northern and western claims for $10 million; the Panhandle is cut off at 36°30′ and the west line set at the 103rd meridian |
| 1896 | United States v. Texas | Greer County, between the forks of the Red River, is awarded to Oklahoma Territory and leaves the Texas map |
| 1921 | Kenedy County created | The 254th and last county; the internal map stops changing |
| 1963–67 | Chamizal Convention | The El Paso–Juárez boundary is corrected where the river had shifted; the last change to the outline of Texas |
Spanish and Mexican Tejas
On Spanish maps Tejas is a frontier province with vague edges, defined by the road between missions rather than by surveyed lines. Its practical extent ran from the Nueces or Medina River northeast to the Sabine, with the capital at Los Adaes and secondary centers at Béxar, La Bahía and Nacogdoches. Everything west of the Pecos and north of the Balcones Escarpment was Comanche and Apache country and was mapped, when it was mapped at all, as empty.
Under the Mexican constitution of 1824 the province was joined to Coahuila. That matters for reading maps of the 1820s and 1830s: "Texas" is a department, and the boundary between Coahuila and Texas is drawn at the Nueces or the Medina, not at the Rio Grande. This is the root of the border argument that produced the Mexican–American War, because the Republic then claimed everything to the Rio Grande.
The Republic and the 1850 sale
Republic-era maps are the strangest to modern eyes. The claimed territory runs up the Rio Grande through Santa Fe and then north in a narrow arm across present-day Colorado into Wyoming — roughly 376,000 square miles, of which the government controlled perhaps a third. The Compromise of 1850 ended it. Texas gave up about 67 million acres north and west of the present line and was paid $10 million, which retired the Republic's debt. The two straight lines that make the Panhandle a rectangle, and the notch at El Paso, both date from that settlement rather than from any natural feature.
Because Texas kept its public lands at annexation, land grants after 1845 were made by the state, not by the federal government. That is why Texas has no federal land survey grid and no township-and-range numbering: its rural land is described by original survey blocks and league-and-labor grants, which is visible on any county plat and on the odd angles of West Texas property lines.
Counties, 1836 to 1921
The Republic converted 23 Mexican municipalities into counties in 1836, most of them in the settled east: Nacogdoches, Bexar, Brazoria, Harris and their neighbors. Those first counties were enormous and were carved up repeatedly as settlement moved west. The pattern is legible on the modern counties map: small, irregular, river-shaped counties in the east where the lines are older, and near-square counties of about 900 square miles across the Panhandle and South Plains, laid out on a survey grid in the 1870s and 1880s before anyone lived in them.
Many of the Panhandle counties existed on paper for decades before they were organized with a courthouse and a sheriff. The last to be created was Kenedy in 1921, cut out of the ranch country north of the Rio Grande Valley, and Loving was the last to be organized. Since then the internal map has been fixed at 254 counties, more than any other state.
Reading an old Texas map
- Check the eastern line. If the boundary is east of the Sabine, the map predates 1819 or shows Spanish claims.
- Check the southern line. A boundary at the Nueces means a Mexican-period or Mexican-published map; the Rio Grande means a Texian or post-1848 one.
- Check the top. An arm running north past Santa Fe dates the map to 1836–1850.
- Check Greer County. Its presence in the Panhandle's southeastern notch dates the map before 1896.
- Count the counties. The number in the legend brackets the date more precisely than anything else on the sheet.